


Wishing We Had a Home

by 30MinuteLoop



Series: stories of train tracks that I will never walk along [1]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Punk, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Femslash, Drinking, Eventual Happy Ending, Homelessness, M/M, Mentions of drugs, Mentions of sex work, Not Beta Read, Snow, Squatting, anti-capitalist, background Mylvia, building a new world in the shell of the old, crust punk AU, cute stuff, stealing to survive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-07-08 00:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 38,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/30MinuteLoop/pseuds/30MinuteLoop
Summary: Crust punk Tilly and Paul hitchhike across the US one summer and end up in a small town in central California, feeling tired of traveling, tired of the grittyness of their lives. As they look for a new way to live, they come to rely on the kindness of new friends and neighbors to help them build something better.





	1. just so fucking tired

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aphelyon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aphelyon/gifts).



Paul reluctantly gets out of the car, dragging his heavy backpack out behind him. On the other side of the car, Tilly hefts her own pack onto sunburned shoulders. They shut the doors and the car pulls away.

Paul squints into the late afternoon, late summer sun, already regretting his life choices. It’s at least 90 degrees out, they don’t have any water, and they have maybe $2.50 to their names.

He didn’t even catch the name of this town. Actually, for all he knows, it doesn’t even have a name. It’s a dusty town in central California, not too far from… Modesto, was it? Every house along this little state highway seems to be boarded up.

Tilly shuffles over to him, still trying to adjust her pack. “Well, that was unexpected.”

“He kept wrinkling his nose, probably didn’t like the way we smelled,” Paul surmises.

“What a dick,” Tilly grumbles, but the joy of having Tilly along is that she never remains grumpy for long. Unlike Paul. He can be grumpy for days on end.

Paul takes a moment to arrange his gray shawl around his head and shoulders. His skin is perpetually slightly sunburned and cracking.

“Check out this house! So cute!” Tilly squeals, pointing over Paul’s shoulder.

Behind him is a one-story wooden cottage with a sagging front porch, white paint grayed and peeling. Broken glass peeks through half-boarded-up windows.

Paul leads the way around back to investigate a less conspicuous way into the house. The rear door, set above a tiny doorstep, hangs sadly off its hinges. Dead grasses dot a small sandy vacant backyard.

Inside, though, the house is even more of a disaster. Needles and drug paraphernalia are scattered in every room. The plumbing has been torn off the walls. The copper wiring has been stripped. And it smells like piss. Everywhere.

“Dammit!” Tilly whines. “So much potential.”

Paul finds that trying to breathe through his scarf doesn’t mitigate the smell enough. “I don’t see it. Let’s get out of here.”

They trudge across the yard toward the next house. It’s a two-story Victorian-style house, no less falling apart. The back door is entirely missing - no, wait, that’s it lying in the yard. The back steps up to the porch are creaky and soft; probably a few months from collapsing entirely. A half-disassembled car sits in the back corner of the small lot.

“This is not promising,” he protests weakly. “We should go back to Modesto.” 

He does not want to go back to Modesto.

“Let’s just take a look, come on!” Tilly bounds up the stairs.

There’s a huge hole in the floor in the kitchen. And yes, there’s some needles scattered around, but a lot less than in the other house. Best of all, nobody’s really peed in any of the rooms - oh, wait, here’s the bathroom, all fittings removed, and yeah, it smells awful, and there are some suspicious looking stains and debris.

Fortunately, the bathroom still has a door, and Paul closes it behind him as he returns to the adjacent dining room (he calls it that because there’s a broken dining table chair in the corner). “I found a couch!” Tilly announces from the next room.

Naturally, it’s a completely filthy couch that does smell like piss - this time, from cats.

“I am not sitting on that,” Paul announces as Tilly flops down on the couch. “That’s disgusting.”

“Every inch of me is disgusting,” she snaps back. “I can’t possibly get any worse.”

Paul grabs Tilly’s hand. “Come on, I want to see what the upstairs is like.”

She sighs heavily and lets him pull her to her feet.

The creaky staircase in the foyer between the living room (gross couch) and the dining room (broken chair) leads them up to three rooms. Each room is vacant, stuffy in the heat, with sunlight streaming through broken windows. Standing in the middle of the room at the top of the stairs, Paul closes his eyes and breathes in. Just dust and heat. But it’s fairly clean, and it’s quiet, and he’s tired. So the decision’s made for him.

“I don’t care what you think, Tilly, I’m staying here.”

“Was I arguing with you?”

“You wanna check to see if we have water? I’m gonna just sit down.” Paul lets his pack drop heavily to the floor and flops down onto the floor, resting his head on the pack.

“Sure.” He hears her footsteps on the stairs and through the downstairs of the house.

It’s so good to be alone. He doesn’t get enough time alone.

Paul dropped out of high school at 17, leaving behind a stifling authoritarian high school and controlling parents, and started traveling. Now it’s been eight years of going from town to town, squat to squat, train car to hitchhiking, across the country, always moving, always collecting a posse of people to look out for him and to look out for them in return. When the opportunities are so limited and the stakes so high, you have to always be looking.

Since March he’s been on the road with Tilly, starting from Minneapolis, where they met. In the late spring they camped in Colorado for a while. The summer they spent feasting off the discards of Colorado’s touristy mountain towns, busking for change, eating leftovers. In the early fall they hitched through Arizona and Utah. It was the most fun Paul had had in quite a while, but even that didn’t put a shine back on this life.

He wants to stay still. He wants to never get back on the road again. He dreads having to go back to a chaotic squat, or get a regular job in some soulsucking fast food franchise, god forbid. But mostly he just wants a home.

Tilly shouts up the stairs, “No water!”

Fuck. He’s gonna have to get moving a lot sooner than he thought. Like right now. They are a few hours away from seriously dehydrating.

“I’m gonna go down to the gas station and get some, maybe get some snacks,” she continues. Paul is already settling back down onto the floor, feeling very sleepy.

***

He wakes up to find Tilly standing over him, shaking cold drops from a gallon jug of water over his face. The sunlight streaming into this room is dimming. “What are you doing?” he grumbles, sitting up and rubbing the refreshing moisture out of his eyes.

“Waking you up?” she says hopefully.

“It worked.” Paul reaches up for the jug and Tilly relinquishes it to him, plopping down onto the floor across from him as he gulps the cold water down.

When he’s done drinking, he hands the jug back and notices Tilly’s looking decidedly less grungy and her matted hair is dripping. “Did you find a shower?” he demands.

“I found a watering can in the back yard. Kind of washed off behind that car. It was the best.”

“Where’d you get the water? Did you have any trouble? Is there food?”

“Slow down,” she giggles. “I went down to the gas station like I said, but I found a working house faucet on the way and I filled up both our jugs. I got some people at the gas station to give me a few bucks and I got us some hot dogs and soda.”

“You didn’t just left-hand something?” Tilly is a master shoplifter.

“I didn’t feel like it,” she confesses, her tone suddenly going quiet and glum, her eyes falling to her toe sticking out of her ragged boot.

Tilly’s younger than Paul by some unknown amount, but she’s been on the street almost as long, after her mom kicked her out of her house. Paul chose this life; she didn’t. And for that reason he feels very protective of her. She’s been trying to make the best of a bad situation for a long time.

“Maybe we can just hang out for a while,” Paul suggests, the ray of hope unfamiliar in his heart. “It doesn’t look like we have any neighbors. Maybe we can…”

“Whatever. Let’s just ride this out as long as we can.”

Because that’s what they always do, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for a situation to change beyond their control.

***

There’s something really refreshing about sleeping on the floor in this stuffy old house. A cool breeze starts blowing in from the broken window around midnight. Paul is rereading his field guide to Western North American plants for what’s probably the thousandth time, illuminating the worn pages by a fading flashlight.

Tilly’s fallen asleep in the next room, her soft snores a soothing reminder of his friend’s presence.

He shuts the field guide and picks up his journal. Worn pages detail plants and mushrooms he’s seen on his trips, supplemented rudimentary little drawings with notes scribbled all around, interspersed with thoughts from his journeys.

Paul flips back several pages, past a year ago, his grumbling about the cold Minnesota fall and winter, spent crashing on couches and trudging around looking for something good to do. Sitting in poorly heated basements drinking stolen beer. He met Tilly that one freezing night at Sketch’s place. And then there was -

Before he can think too much about _that asshole_ he flips forward again to a blank page and starts doodling lazy curlicues, turning them into vines.

 _Fuck Sean._ Nope, he’s thinking about him whether he wants to or not. And he doesn’t even have a cigarette to take the edge off his racing mind. Maybe he can get someone to give him one tomorrow. For now, it’s just lying on the floor alone fidgeting as if he could somehow work all the nervous energy out of the tips of his fingers if only he just fidgeted long enough.

***

Three days pass before anyone even gives Paul and Tilly a second glance around town. They start noting which houses on the highway are occupied when they walk down to the gas station. Tilly goes on some long walks to scope out the neighborhood. A few streets extend back away from the highway and those are more occupied. But it seems like they’ve chosen a good spot, isolated, no neighbors.

They’ve managed to rig a whole little bathroom in the backyard of the house, which abuts a large farm property behind. They took a couple of boards down from the rear windows and used them to create a little boxed area against the car. They found an old shovel on the next block and dug a pit for emergency use. Otherwise they just go to the gas station, like Paul’s doing now.

“Been seeing you around a lot,” the gas station clerk, a sharp-nosed thin white woman in her 40s or so who reeks of cigarettes (the smell is awfully comforting), says when Paul comes in to use the bathroom and buy a soft-serve ice cream to split with Tilly. It’s a bit cooler than it was when they got here, but still hard to bear on a daily basis in that house.

“Yeah,” Paul says carefully, trying not to get too defensive right off the bat. He knows where these kind of queries tend to go.

“I’ve seen your friend bothering folks at the pump,” she continues.

Paul’s eyes widen before he can control his response. He sets his lips flat and heads for the bathroom. _Shit_.

They might not be able to come back here again. His mind is racing. This is the only place to buy food they can find. Tilly’s sob stories usually get them enough money so Paul can buy a bag of chips to cover up Tilly’s masterful pocketing of trail mix and beer. 

When he emerges, the clerk is standing by the door. “Don’t come in here again, you’re banned.”

“I’m banned?” Paul explodes, having just lost the last of his cool. “I’m banned? Why don’t you just go ahead and ban everybody who comes in to use your bathroom and buy something then?”

“Look, I have your friend on camera stealing. If you don’t come back I won’t call the cops.”

Paul’s cheeks are flaming by now, he’s sure, and he’d start panicking about what he was going to do, if he wasn’t so filled with anger. Every door is closed to them. They just want a place to stay and food to eat and access to a fucking toilet and people who ought to be on his side are upholding some rich person’s shitty conception of acceptable conduct and who deserves the basic conditions of living.

But he’s really just so goddamn tired and he doesn’t want to spend another night in jail. And he can’t leave Tilly alone out here, even if his tongue is itching. “Are you going to sleep better at night knowing that you’re helping kick other people when they’re down?” he snaps.

She looks away. “Get out. Now.”

“Fuck you,” Paul spits out before he shoves the door open and returns to the blazing sun and a world that doesn’t want him.

***

Back at the house, he and Tilly sit on the floor in the middle of the living room to assess the situation. Since she’s had two showers in the last four days Tilly’s not inclined to risk the couch anymore.

“If we stay, we need a toilet and running water and we need some place to get food,” Paul says. “I don’t see how that’s gonna happen.”

“If we go, we need to know that it’s better than here,” Tilly counters. “I want to ride this thing out all the way. I mean, come on, when was the last time we had an uninterrupted four days without druggies, or mooches, or pervs, or cops, or…” Her eyes narrow and her mouth twists. “I would happily shit in a pit for the rest of my life, if it means I don’t have to deal with another nosy fucker who wants something from me, you know?” she spits out with sudden anger.

 _He knows_. “What are we going to do about food?”

“We could hitch a ride back to that big town and try to scrape up some cash, or we could just wheel a cart out of the store and run.” She stares into space for a moment. “Do you think that lady knows where we live? Do you think she’s already called the cops on us?”

Paul has no clue. “She can’t see all the way down the road to here, so she can’t know which house we’re in. There are a lot of old houses back here. I don’t know.”

“We probably just need to stay away from that end of town for a while,” she muses. “Maybe they’ll forget about us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Titles of each chapter are based on folk punk and punk songs from the mid-2000s. If that's something you're into, check out the full soundtrack listing posted at the end of the final chapter.


	2. fruits of this economy

The next day they hitch a ride to town and set up shop on the busiest street corner they can find. Tilly offers poems and magic tricks, while Paul sketches plants and mushrooms from his travels, little nuggets of his best work that he can offer to people for a dollar. By the end of a grueling hot day in the sun they’ve amassed… $21.

“I feel like we could be okay on $21,” Tilly says brightly.

“We had to sit out here for eight fucking hours to do it. We can’t do this every day. I am going to be so sunburned tomorrow.”

She gives him a look and gestures at her face. “We are _both_ going to be tomatoes tomorrow. But at least right now we have $21.”

$21 buys them a six-pack of cheap beer, 2 loaves of bread, a block of cheese, a bar of soap, and a bag of discount apples. Paul can almost taste the sweet crunch of the apples just looking at them. They have $3.72 left over. “Toilet paper!” Tilly exclaims at the checkstand, and runs back. Paul notices that when she returns with the toilet paper her pockets look just a bit bulgier.

By the time they get a ride back to their house it’s late at night and they are exhausted. Tilly spills bags of nuts and chocolate and chips out of every pocket. They might even make it a week on this if they don’t eat too much.

***

They drag the disgusting couch into the backyard early the next afternoon. Half an hour later the living room already smells so much better. Tilly goes off in search of a different source of water, one that isn’t so close to the gas station, while Paul throws out the broken chair and uses some old newspapers to try to sweep up the dirt and needles and other debris. There’s not a stick of furniture in this whole house now, but it feels more like a home than anywhere Paul has been in a painfully long time. This is _theirs_. For now.

And when he’s done, he’s so glad to go into a room he can call his, and be alone, even if it’s so stuffy already today that he just lies on the floor naked and stares at the ceiling. Blessed silence, except when a semi-truck or noisy old car rumbles by. He doesn’t have to be anything for anyone.

“Paul, don’t be mad at me,” Tilly calls up the stairs sometime later.

“What the fuck is it now?” he calls, reluctantly peeling himself off the floor and putting on shorts again. “I wish you’d just leave me alone,” he mutters, maybe quietly enough that she can’t hear him. He can’t be sure and he doesn’t particularly care at the moment. He opens the door and steps out onto the landing. “I swear, I can’t -”

At the bottom of the stairs next to Tilly is a very clean-cut guy around their age, with a close-cropped beard and stunning dark eyes and-

_Oh shit._

“Who’s that?” Paul asks Tilly, not in the mood for strangers just barging into their precariously staked-out space. Especially while he’s only wearing shorts, and probably looks like the scruffiest grossest Lost Boy or something.

“This is Hugh, I found him trying to hitch a ride out of town but he’s been out there for a long time and it’s getting hot, and I thought he could use a break so I told him he could come hang out here,” Tilly says in one breath.

“Hi,” Hugh says tentatively, fixing those eyes on Paul in an entirely disarming way. “I hope it’s okay I’m here. I just… I’m not used to hitchhiking. My car broke down a while back, and I needed to go see my family. I’m trying to get home and no one is picking me up.”

Paul softens a bit but tries not to let it show. The hot stranger is nice too. _Fuck._ “Okay, fine,” he says somewhat dismissively and turns to go back into his room and try to find a shirt that’s not disgusting and maybe comb his fingers through his hair so it looks nicer and - _fuck_. 

***

“ _Isn’t he cute_?” Tilly hisses at him while Hugh goes to use their pit toilet. “Kind of your type?”

Paul just looks at her. “Whatever,” he shrugs, pushing an uneasy feeling aside.

“So hey,” she starts when Hugh returns. “How’d you end up here?”

“Ride dropped me here before they headed south,” Hugh says. “I’ve still got a ways to go back to San Francisco.”

“What’s in San Francisco?” Paul asks, his own curiosity surprising him.

“School. Work. I’m in my first year of med school. I think I’m trying to be a doctor.”

Paul raises his eyebrows. “You think?”

“I don’t know. Being a doctor. It’s a huge commitment. It’s a huge debt. I don’t know,” Hugh says, his eyes dropping to his fingers, nervously wiggling them.

Tilly jumps in. “Why do you want to be a doctor?”

“I just want to help people,” he replies. “Everything in the world is so fucked up, but I feel a lot better if I can make one person’s life better. There are so many health problems that our system doesn’t fix, so many people who aren’t getting the help they need.”

“That’s so great. I’m glad you’re doing that.” Tilly smiles at Hugh and touches his arm.

Hugh seems to misinterpret Tilly’s gesture and immediately pulls away. She shrinks back in turn, her smile fading as she blushes. “I’m gonna go… find us some snacks.” She hurries out of the room.

Hugh watches her leave. “Your friend’s really sweet. But I hope she wasn’t trying to flirt with me. I’m… not really into women.” He smiles, giving Paul a sideways glance.

 _Ohhhh my god._ The uneasy feeling is back and it’s all about the smile on Hugh’s face and _he’s gay_ and -

Hugh’s smile evaporates though as he watches Paul process this information. “Maybe I’d better go,” Hugh announces, his eyes turning wary as he takes a step back. “If I’m not welcome -”

“No no no no no. Wait, no.” Paul’s brain finally kicks into gear. He’s probably been wearing a very concerned expression that Hugh could misinterpret. “Tilly and I are both queer. You don’t have anything to worry about. I promise.”

Hugh doesn’t move closer. “You’re sure? She’s not going to be weird?”

“She’s just friendly,” Paul says. “She’s not going to be weird. Well, not that kind of weird anyway.” He tries not to let Hugh’s tentative smile get to him.

True to form, Tilly comes back a few moments with chips and trail mix and pretends like nothing ever happened as they sit on the floor to snack.

“You have an awful sunburn,” Hugh observes through a mouthful of chips. “Both of you.” He rummages around in his backpack for a moment (a battered old backpack like that one Paul used to carry in high school, it’s so small compared to the huge bag he’s been lugging for years) and produces a tiny tube of aloe. “Do you want some?”

“Oh my gosh,” Tilly says, grabbing for it before Paul can even blink. She smears the aloe over her face and groans as she flops back on the floor, eyes closed, savoring the sensation. “Thank you. Wow.”

Paul leans over to grab the tube off the floor next to Tilly, squeezing the remainder into his hand and patting it onto his face gingerly. “You are a lifesaver.”

“I hope so,” Hugh says, smiling. “You missed a spot though.” He touches the softest part of Paul’s cheek, tickling the scruffy beard he’s had going for a month now. Paul’s heart flips despite his determination to ignore that feeling. He glances over at Tilly; she’s still got her eyes firmly closed.

“Thanks,” he manages as he covers up the bare spot.

“You can grow aloe in a pot,” Hugh continues. “I have some at home. Maybe I can bring you some next time I come through here.”

“You’re going to come back here?”

Hugh nods. “Once a month or so, I come through here on my way to see my family. I don’t usually stop here, and now that I don’t have a car, I don’t know that I’ll be able to stop here, but… yeah.”

That seems nice.

***

After the heat of the day passes, around 5 PM, Paul goes to sit next to Hugh as he tries to catch a ride. It’s mostly companionable silence, Hugh standing attentively and looking at every passing car, holding his “San Francisco” sign. Paul picks blades of dead grass and tries not to face directly into the sun, even though if he sits that way he can look at Hugh.

Eventually a car pulls over and the driver can take Hugh all the way to the city.

“Thanks for helping me out,” Hugh says as he gets into the car. “I’ll see you again, sometime, maybe.”

“If we’re still here.” Paul shrugs. “I never stay in one place for long, it seems like.”

“Well, I hope you do,” Hugh returns, training that smile back on him and Paul can’t help but grin. “Bye!” He waves and shuts the door, and the car pulls away, toward the setting sun.

***

Improbably. they do stay, for weeks. Nobody comes to the house to tell them to leave. Nobody calls the cops on them.

Paul waits for the other shoe to drop - it absolutely has to. He tries to shake off the rising panic. It starts every morning now when he wakes up alone in a room that’s maybe his own and he tries to contemplate the day. 

There is no way they don’t get evicted from here, maybe thrown in jail for trespassing, maybe he gets separated from Tilly and she ends up on the street alone and falls in with someone who will hurt her and -

Will this be the day it all comes crashing down on their heads?

He almost wishes they were back in Minneapolis with their friends and -

No, that’s ridiculous. It was non-stop drama back then. He can’t miss any of those people.

He does, but… he loves the sort-of fresh air and the freedom and the silence and the solitude.

But this town makes Tilly a bit stir-crazy. She practices spinning poi and magic tricks, tries to clean up the house with their scraps of soap and limited water, writes postcards she mostly can’t send. Sometimes she hitches a ride back into town and tries to make some money for food and stamps.

Most of the time Paul goes with her. A couple times he hasn’t. Both those times, she came back late. She always assures him she’s not getting into trouble, but he worries. She’s smart and resourceful, but she always wants to stay on people’s good side, and she’s always up for a new adventure, and sometimes that means she doesn’t stay safe.

One day Tilly’s set off back into town, armed not only with her poi and her magic tricks but with a stack of Paul’s drawings. Even though he’s been such a hermit, Paul somehow picked up a cold he just can’t kick, and a cough that rattles his lungs, and Tilly insists he should stay home and rest.

Paul sits on the ground in the backyard and watches the tractors pace back and forth across the fields, doodling idly and wondering what the endgame of living here is. What is he doing? What does he want to be doing? Was it a good idea to run away at 17? What if he’d graduated? What if he’d gone to college?

_So what if I’d sold out? Would I be happier now?_

The silence out here, the stillness, has a way of opening doors to thoughts that he’s normally stifled under the weight of daily living.

He hears footsteps on the grass coming around back. “Tilly, what’s -” Paul starts, turning around.

It’s Hugh. Paul’s heart leaps into his throat. He’d written Hugh off as a passing interest, someone who lit a spark and never returned. But here he is again, the picture of laidback California in his t-shirt, shorts, and sandals, wearing sunglasses, a backpack on his back, a tote bag hanging from one hand.

“Oh, hey,” Hugh says, almost forcedly casual. “I was hoping I’d find you here.”

“Hi.” The word falls off Paul’s tongue awkwardly. He chuckles, “Wow, I didn’t actually think you’d come back.”

Hugh looks bashful. “You and Tilly took such good care of me. How could I not come back and say hi? Where is she?”

“She’s gone for the day,” Paul says, before descending into a sudden coughing fit that doubles him over for several moments. When he can catch his breath again, he uncurls himself to find Hugh crouched down next to him, just a couple feet away.

“Cough drop?” Hugh offers, holding one out. “That’s a nasty cough.” Paul takes it and puts it in his pocket. “You’re not going to use it?”

Paul shakes his head. “The cough gets worse at night. I’ll need it more then.”

Hugh rolls his eyes, digs in his backpack, and hands Paul the rest of the bag of cough drops. “Have you ever considered getting a job?”

“Oh, god, what a great idea! Why didn’t I think of that?” Paul smacks his forehead dramatically. “You know that people are just beating down the door to hire a sick person with no work experience or permanent address.”

Hugh sighs and sits heavily on the ground next to Paul. “Sorry, I meant before you got sick. You kind of have a permanent address now.”

“It’s not that easy. I’m a liability.”

“I might know a thing or two about having trouble finding a job,” Hugh says irritably. “I could help you.”

“Why do you want me to get a job so bad? What’s so great about wasting the best part of your life working for a boss who doesn’t care about you?”

“I don’t know, not living in a falling down house with a gross pit toilet, getting to eat actual food instead of whatever you beg or steal or scrounge up, building roots in a place, and making friends?”

Paul was all ready to keep bickering but he has to concede Hugh has a point. A point he’s already been wrestling with.

He sighs, pulls the single cough drop out of his pocket, unwraps it, and pops it in his mouth. “Anyway. Um. What have you been up to for the past month?” he says around the cough drop.

“Are you seriously not going to respond to what I said?”

“I was hoping we could have a nice conversation, mostly. I don’t know how to be the sort of person who gets a job. I don’t even know if that’s what I want. I mostly just want to stay in one place and not have to do anything.”

Hugh raises an eyebrow. “Warning sign of depression.”

“Do you _ever_ stop doctoring?” Paul complains. “Of course I’m depressed. I never have quite enough food, I have a shitty cold, I have one friend, I have no skills, and I have no idea what I’m doing with my life.”

“Two friends,” Hugh says softly.

_Oh._

Paul convinces Hugh to have a beer with him. And to stop hassling him about getting a job for now. “Let me get better first. Let me talk to Tilly,” he promises as he gets up.

When he returns with beers, Hugh changes the subject and talks about med school, about his family, why he still hasn’t dropped out of school. “I don’t stop doctoring because on some level it’s my calling,” he admits. “I just don’t like jumping through hoops. I want to help people, not do paperwork or get enmeshed in a system that doesn’t care about them or me.”

“I guess that makes two of us,” Paul points out. Hugh sighs and nods as he finishes his beer.

Hugh looks at his phone, taps a few buttons, and seems to be reading. “I’ll come by and see you and Tilly on my way home in a couple days. But I have a rideshare from Craigslist that’s coming to pick me up as the gas station in fifteen minutes. He just texted me.”

“You can send people messages on that thing?”

Hugh laughs as he gets up. “It’s 2008, Paul, get a clue.”

***

That night, Tilly comes back with $50 and food and beer and a bottle of cold medicine.

She won’t tell Paul how she got it. By the dim light of Paul’s flashlight, he can see her shake her head. “No. I don’t want you to worry about me.”

Paul throws his hands in the air. “Are you selling drugs? Did you blow a guy? Did you rob a store? Like, we don’t just get $50. Ever. Fuck off with that shit, you don’t want me to worry about what happens to you. We’re friends, aren’t we? Weren’t we gonna try to get away from all this crap?”

“How are we going to get away, Paul? Seriously, tell me! Yeah, this place is quiet and safe. But we don’t have any friends to look out for us. We can’t survive by ourselves. I’m doing what it takes.”

“Hugh came over today,” Paul blurts out.

Tilly’s whole tone and demeanor changes from combative to curious. “Oh, wow, I’d almost forgotten about him! How is he?”

“He’s good,” Paul says, and his whole tone has changed too. “He’ll be back in a couple days. I think - he might be a friend. He might even have some way to help us out.”

“Do you know that? Is he just gonna swoop in and save us?” she snaps, waving her hands, boomeranging back to irritation. “Maybe instead of getting mad at me, or waiting for Hugh to save our asses, you should come up with a better idea. You’ve just been moping around for weeks and I’m tired of it.” She flops down on the floor, opens a can of beer, and starts unpacking her loot. “You don’t want me to get into trouble, maybe help me get a better plan, okay?”

He grabs the cold medicine and a bag of chips from her grocery pile, and heads upstairs. “I’m done having this discussion,” he yells over his shoulder.

“We’re gonna have it tomorrow and the next day,” she calls back.


	3. ambiguity shelters you from responsibility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I originally wrote in Chapter 2 that it was 2007. It's actually 2008. Whoops. Re-adjust your expectations accordingly :D )

The next day Paul’s slow to get going. He probably shouldn’t have drank as much of the cold medicine as he did, but it did help the night pass without too much discomfort.

When he passes through the living room on his way to the toilet, Tilly doesn’t even look at him, sprawled out on the floor writing postcards. The silent treatment.

Fine.

After shuffling back up to his room, he gazes out the window for a while, still in a bit of a sleepy stupor. At some point, Tilly goes outside and wanders around the backyard, her hair tied back and covered in her favorite polka-dotted bandanna. She seems to be scrutinizing the ground. Then she grabs the shovel and starts digging. He watches her work for a few minutes, and then takes a nap.

When he wakes up, he sees that she’s dug an outline of a large rectangle.

“What are you doing?” he calls down to her.

“Making a vegetable garden. You want to help?”

“Do you even have seeds?”

“Are you going to criticize me, or are you going to help me?” she demands, not even looking at him, eyes on her digging. “I’m only interested in one of those. Guess which one.”

Paul sighs. Hugh first, and now Tilly, after him to do something with himself. He doesn’t see the point in digging a garden. They might not be here next week. But if it’ll get Tilly to talk to him again…

It’s surprisingly good, Paul discovers, to dig up this dead yard, even though he’s wheezing a bit as he works, and popping cough drops regularly. The soil is dry and gray, but as he uses a tree branch to follow Tilly’s shoveling, loosening and working the soil, he starts to dream.

A native plant garden along the back fence. A composting toilet like the one on that farm in Colorado they slept at one night. Tomatoes growing four feet tall. Fresh corn. Maybe he could learn more about medicinal plants. Maybe…

“What are you smiling about?” Tilly says teasingly.

“What to plant. I want tomatoes,” Paul says. “That’s probably a lot of money. I don’t know anything about gardening.”

“We have 50 bucks.” She shrugs. “There’s actually a huge garden store a mile or two back down the road, so I can walk there. And you’re not going to bug me about spending it, okay?”

He just rolls his eyes at her. “Can I at least come with you and help you decide what to get?”

She grins and nods.

 

The next afternoon, they're walking back into town from the garden store, when Tilly suddenly stops cold and throws her arm out in front of Paul.

“The cops!” she hisses. “Fuck.”

Two uniformed men are standing on their front porch talking to a third man. Paul squints as if that will help him see through the growing haze - the garden store clerk told them there’s a wildfire 50 miles away that’s spreading.

“Oh shit, that’s Hugh.”

Tilly’s eyes go huge. “Oh no.” She looks around for a spot to drop her bags, settling on next to an overgrown shrub in front of another abandoned house. “We need to go help him,” she says urgently.

“How are we going to help him? We’re the ones they’re after,” Paul argues, but he’s dropping his tomato plants next to her bags and then hurrying to walk ahead of Tilly.

“I wish I could hear what’s going on,” she says. Everyone seems to be talking in very quiet voices.

Hugh sees them and relief fills his eyes, but he doesn’t acknowledge them as they approach.

“Hey, is everything all right here?” Paul asks as he reaches the bottom of the stairs.

The officers, sheriff’s deputies by the look of it, turn around and eye them suspiciously. The balding, heavyset white guy says, “We have a report that people are living in this house. Matching your description. Your friend here was on the property when we arrived.”

Handling this without making it worse is going to be almost impossible. Paul bites his lip as he thinks. “Look, we have permission from the owner to be here. We’re looking at buying the house but in the meantime they’re letting us live here rent-free. We’re trying to fix it up a bit.”

“Are you really? And what’s the owner’s name?”

“Richmond Tharp,” Hugh responds instantly. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. It’s okay that I’m here.”

Paul shoots Hugh a boggled look that he hopes the deputies don’t notice. Fortunately, they seem to be looking at each other.

The taller, more muscular deputy shrugs. “Well, if we talk to Mr. Tharp and that’s not true, we’ll be back very soon,” he says warningly as he closes his notepad. The deputies meander back to their car, parked on the shoulder on the opposite side of the road, and in moments, they’re gone.

“Ho-ly shit, Hugh,” Paul breathes. “I thought we were all going to jail. Is that actually the owner’s name?”

“Yeah, I’ve never been so glad I wasted time on the internet. I looked up the address once. I really thought they were going to haul me in. Shit.” He sits down heavily on the porch stairs, staring at his hands.

“It has an address?” Tilly peers at the worn wood facade curiously. Hugh points to the numbers, nearly invisible, nailed to the porch banister right next to him.

Paul’s legs feel weak, and he feels very vulnerable out here facing the state highway, all of them on display to the world. “Tilly and I should get our plants. And we should go inside, or at least to the backyard.”

They reconvene in the backyard, Hugh now sitting on the back porch stairs, Paul and Tilly trying to arrange the starts where they want to plant them.

“You two are going to need running water if you want to keep anything alive in this climate,” Hugh calls to them. “How can you plant at a time like this anyway? We almost went to jail.” He gets up and starts pacing around the foot of the stairs.

Paul watches him for a few moments. Seeing Hugh rattled like this is rattling him. He stands up and dusts off his hands as he walks over. “You all right?” he asks, feeling ridiculous as he says it. _Of course he’s not all right._

“I never should have stayed when I saw you weren’t here!” Hugh exclaims. “I had the whole afternoon free. I should have just gone home.”

“They could have gotten you for hitchhiking, or loitering, or something, since they were obviously going to come out here anyway,” Paul says, dimly aware that this is not a particularly soothing statement.

“I can’t go around getting myself into trouble. I’m in medical school, Paul. I have responsibilities. My family is counting on me. I’m the first to go to college, even, on either side of my family. How could I…” He trails off. “I shouldn’t have even stopped at all.”

“Hugh,” Paul says, gently but firmly. “There’s no way you could have known. But we don’t have to worry right now. We’re fine.”

Hugh scowls. “You’re fine. I didn’t sign up for this.”

“Don’t blame this on us,” Paul snaps. “You didn’t have to come see us or associate with us.” He takes in Hugh’s irate glare, pauses, and sighs. “Look, we probably all just need to chill out for a bit. Come have a beer with me.”

Hugh sighs, biting his lip as he looks away. Eventually, he nods resignedly. “Okay.”

“Beer break!” Tilly says cheerfully, bounding up the steps ahead of them. “Only the finest warm beer for our guest.”

But Tilly is too excited about the garden again to spend much time indoors, so she takes her beer back out as she digs holes for the starts and lines up troughs for the seeds.

Hugh sits cross-legged on the floor of the living room, back against the wall facing the foyer, as he drinks his beer. The troubled look hasn’t left his face. “You guys shouldn’t have to live like this,” he says.

Paul shrugs.

“You know this lot has dropped in value a lot. The house isn’t worth much, according to the real estate website I saw, but it hasn’t been condemned. The only value is the land, and it’s not worth much at that either, not with the stock market being how it is.” At Paul’s quizzical look, Hugh goes on. “Uh, the mortgage crisis?” Paul shakes his head. “The whole economy is tanking because of some greedy bankers?”

“Isn’t it always?” Paul quips. “I don’t have to read the news. I know what those assholes are up to.”

“You could buy this place for not very much money right now, is what I’m saying. Like maybe ten or twenty thousand dollars.”

“Right, become part of the owning class, sure, it’s what I’ve always wanted,” Paul responds sarcastically. “And I’m gonna get that kind of money how?” Hugh rolls his eyes as his only response. “I mean, I guess I could get a job, but I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“So you’re super happy here, just living on the edge of eviction and jail at any time? You’re thrilled to be a few days away from hunger and have no safety net? You’re comfortable just surviving off the dregs of society and not contributing anything?” Hugh is giving his empty beer can a defeated look.

The derision and disappointment in his voice cuts Paul . He can’t muster his usual ingrained, defensive sarcastic responses. “You say these things about buying a house or getting a job like they’re obvious. I literally don’t know how. And all this could collapse next week, so I don’t see the point of making big plans.”

Hugh fixes him with a very solemn look. “That doesn’t sound quite like you’re saying no. More like you’re saying you do want something different and you don’t know what to do next.”

Paul closes his eyes to try to collect his thoughts.

 _What if I had a_ home?

That question leaves him so unsettled, but it's about being  _settled_ , right?

“Paul?”

He snaps his eyes open again. “Okay. Say I did want to try things your way. What would I do next?”

***

It turns out that the answer to _what next?_ is Paul hitching back to San Francisco with Hugh to get cleaned up, obtain some decent clothes, and writing, apparently, a resume. His heart races at the idea of spending a whole day with Hugh, although it’s probably because of the adventure of going to San Francisco. Or that’s what he tells himself.

Paul tries to talk Tilly into coming with them, but Tilly waves him off. “I’ll be fine, Paul. If the cops show up, I’ll run. I’m good at running. You’ll be back tomorrow, it’ll be fine. Go.”

After hitching a ride out of town, they get dropped off at a BART station outside the city and have to take a train and then a bus to get to Hugh’s apartment. It’s 10:30 by the time they walk into Hugh’s place.

Hugh lives in a shared apartment with 3 other people. Everyone seems to be out for the night, though. It’s just them.

The living room is marked off with privacy screens and sheets, forming one person’s bedroom. Hugh’s room is a glorified closet right next to the bathroom. There are two actual bedrooms. Hugh refuses to tell Paul how much the rent is here. It’s probably more money than Paul has ever had in his life.

Hugh turns on the light in his room. “Here it is,” he says with a sigh.

Hugh’s single bed, dresser, and bedside table is taking up most of the available space, although there’s enough floor space for one or maybe two people.

“You can have the bed,” Hugh says. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

It’s been a very long time since Paul slept in a bed. Months. He’s not even sure he could do it. “I’m used to the floor. You’re doing me a huge favor right now and you should be comfortable.”

They look at each other, at a stalemate. Paul crosses his arms over this chest as he makes what he hopes is intimidating eye contact that will end the conversation.

“Fine. Thanks,” Hugh relents. He yawns. “I think I need to go to sleep soon. But first - tea?”

Hugh makes them some fancy herbal tea with ginger. They sit at a little round table in the stark white kitchen under a buzzing fluorescent light bulb, drinking out of chipped mugs. 

“This is my favorite tea,” Hugh says, closing his eyes as he takes the first sip.

The hot ginger flavor is surprisingly refreshing, but it also reminds Paul that he dropped his toothbrush in a ditch ages ago and… his mouth is kind of gross.

“Do you, um, have a spare toothbrush?”

Hugh smiles teasingly at him over the top of his tea mug, and Paul shivers suddenly. “Yeah, sure, I’ll grab it for you after tea.”

Hugh starts telling Paul about how he knows his roommates, all medical students themselves in varying stages of their studies, and he’s not following the details, but he does notice how Hugh has such a melodic voice that he’s just following the notes rather than the words.

When Hugh finishes his tea, he gets up, takes Paul’s empty mug too, and puts them on the counter next to the sink. “Let me find you that toothbrush.” Paul follows him to the bathroom and Hugh rummages around in the under-sink cabinet.

“Here you go.” Hugh hands him a toothbrush still in a plastic bag. “Fresh from my last dentist visit.”

Paul rips the wrapping off as Hugh goes to get his own toothbrush out of his backpack.

They end up standing together in the bathroom in front of the mirror, brushing. It’s so _domestic_ , so _safe_. Like when Paul and his little sister Anne would brush their teeth in the upstairs bathroom of their old house, before Paul got sharp around the edges, got angry, came out, left home.

His heart clenches around this memory and he has to finish brushing and leave the room abruptly, before Hugh sees him looking sad. He doesn’t want to explain.

He unrolls his sleeping bag on the floor, noticing for the first time in a while how dirty it is. In the cleanliness of this house, the smell also stands out. He’s been trying to keep cleaner at home, noticing how his skin itches less when he doesn’t have two weeks’ worth of grime on it. Hugh must find his life very… dirty.

Hugh comes into the room behind him as Paul is contemplating his filth. “Everything okay?” The question is so gentle. His throat closes up. He turns around and looks at Hugh’s concerned expression, big brown eyes gazing into his own.

“I need a shower. And to wash this sleeping bag,” he manages.

“Sure,” Hugh responds easily. “Follow me.”

Paul gathers up his sleeping bag and his spare clothes, throws them in the wash downstairs, and then borrows a towel from Hugh to take a shower. He stands there for a long time, watching light gray water spiral down the drain mixed with what some might call an excessive amount of soap.

After the shower, standing in front of the mirror with wet hair smoothed back, the grunge gone from his beard, he feels almost remade. His skin is pink from scrubbing. He smells like peppermint.

Putting on his old clothes again feels like stepping backwards. At least these are the cleaner ones, of the clothes he owns, raggedy patched-up black jeans and plain black t-shirt with a hole in the left sleeve.

Coming back into Hugh’s room, he finds Hugh curled up under a blanket with a book, looking so cozy his heart clenches up again.

“What are you reading?” Paul asks as he sits down on top of a stack of blankets Hugh must have set out for him while he was in the shower. There’s also a pillow.

“It’s called _The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down_. It’s a true story about cross-cultural medicine. Assigned reading for a class on ethics and medicine I’m starting next week.” Hugh sticks a bookmark into the book and sets it on his bedside table. “Feeling better?”

Paul is basically eye level with Hugh and transfixed by the way his lips move, making his response slightly delayed. “Uh, yeah. A lot.”

Hugh grins at him. Can he possibly know what Paul is thinking? “I’m glad,” he says, reaching out to mess up Paul’s wet hair just a bit, his fingers brushing Paul’s scalp soothingly. “I put your stuff in the dryer already. You got everything you need? I’m going to sleep.”

Paul nods as Hugh pulls his blanket up to his chin and turns over. “Okay then, turn off the light when you’re ready. Night.”

Paul just sits for a moment, the sensation of Hugh’s hand on his head lingering. He sighs. Hugh is _something else_. He lays out the blankets and pillow, turns off the light, and crawls under the top blanket.

He lies awake a long time. What does Hugh really mean by all his kindness? Why would he invite Paul out to San Francisco anyway? Is Paul a _charity case_ to him? The thought makes him feel sick. Nobody is allowed to feel sorry for him. Except maybe himself.

But Hugh has _such_ a smile...


	4. and your house is made of wood, central air, central heat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see, my updating schedule is going to be kind of erratic! A bunch of pieces just started coming together this week, so we'll see how things go from here - I've got Chapter 5 almost done already but I'd like to stay ahead of the game. Right now this is looking like a 10ish-chapter story.
> 
> As always, comments are very much appreciated!

“Morning, sleepy.” Hugh’s cheerful voice rouses Paul.

“Mmpf.” Paul rolls himself more tightly in the blankets and buries his face in the pillow.

“We only have today, you know. If I’m gonna turn you into a hireable man we have to get cracking.”

“Are you thinking of this as some terrible high school makeover movie?” Paul grumbles, opening his eyes to glare at Hugh looking down at him from the doorway.

“You said it, I didn’t.” Hugh shrugs. “I made us some pancakes, if that helps.”

At those words, Paul notices the smell in the air.

“You’re my hero,” Paul pronounces, flinging off the covers. “I miss pancakes so much.”

“Well, if all I have to do is make you pancakes to be your hero, I don’t know why I’m bothering with everything else.”

_Oh fuck, he’s flirting with me. Is he flirting with me? He’s flirting. Isn’t he?_

 

After breakfast Hugh takes him to a thrift store and they spend a good hour rifling through the racks. Hugh has _opinions_ about what Paul should wear. He vetoes all Paul’s favorites.

“Look, you’re trying to impress business people and managers,” Hugh tells him after rejecting what was apparently a too garish plaid shirt. “You need to look… professional. Clean. Simple clothes that look classy.” He holds up a plain white button-up. “This would be a good start but it’s obviously too big for you.”

Paul looks from the shirt to Hugh and back, having no idea how he could know whether the shirt was the right size for him. Let alone whether a shirt is okay for an interview or not. “How did you learn all this stuff?”

Hugh frowns at the purple collared shirt Paul removes from the rack, then takes it from him and puts it back. “My dad taught me some of it. Dressing for church, or for high school events, or for jobs.” He shakes his head. “I’m sure he wouldn’t approve of some of what I wear now, but, you know. He doesn’t need to follow me out to a club, on the rare occasion I go to one.”

“What does your family think of you being gay?”

“They’re fine now. We had some frosty weeks after I came out, but they just had some misconceptions. But they want me to be happy, so of course they supported me.” Hugh selects a couple of shirts from the rack, holds them up near Paul, and nods. “What does your family think?”

“I dated a girl in freshman year, and it was fine. Then I dated a guy in junior year, and they… didn’t take it well.” Paul closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before continuing. “I was also hanging out with a lot of punk kids they didn’t approve of, and smoking a lot of pot, and it was just the icing on the cake for them. My little sister was their dream child. I was the fuckup.”

“Have they gotten better about it?”

Paul lets out a deep sigh. “I haven’t spoken to them in five years. So I guess I don’t know.”

Hugh’s eyes go huge. “Paul. You haven’t spoken to your family in _five years_? Do they even know where you are?”

“Not unless they’ve been tailing me across the country.”

“Did something happen to make you stop talking to them?”

“Sometimes I’d go have dinner with them. They were always so disappointed in me. It showed. They didn’t understand why I’d want to go have adventures instead of go to college, fall into some job that would suck away all my time and energy, get married, have kids, buy some suburban house, just like they did. We didn’t have anything in common. They'd always ask all these pointed questions about who I was dating, and if I'd found a job, and if I'd consider going to community college. Every time. So I stopped calling.”

“Those are your _parents_ , though, Paul. _They raised you_. Don’t you think they worry about you?”

“I doubt it.”

“I doubt that’s true.”

Paul scowls. “I’m not talking about this anymore, okay? That’s not what I signed up for. Just help me choose some fucking clothes, so I don’t have to go back to living on the street.” He turns to head down the next aisle.

“Hey.” Hugh’s hand lands softly on his shoulder, and Paul stops willingly, but doesn’t turn around. “I’m sorry. I asked too many questions.”

“It’s okay.” It’s not quite okay, but he doesn’t want to get into it right now. “I guess you think I should wear black pants for an interview?”

“They’re called slacks, and yes.”

 

Twenty dollars later, Paul has interview clothes.

Next up is the haircut. Hugh promises to try do a halfway decent job on Paul’s, although he cautions, “I've never cut hair like yours. My whole family has curly or wavy hair, and I don’t think I’ve ever cut a white person’s hair.”

“Look, it’ll be better than whatever I do,” Paul assures him. His normal method of cutting his hair has been scissors and a mirror and a willingness to settle for imperfection. Frugality and creativity are not what he’s been told hiring managers approve of, though.

Paul also likes the feeling of Hugh’s hands on his head as he takes the clippers and then scissors to Paul’s hair. A small pile of hair gradually accumulates on the floor. When he’s done, Paul has short, almost fluffy hair on top with somewhat shorter sides. And now his beard is longer than the hair on his head.

“You’re going to have to trim your beard if you don’t want to look weird,” Hugh tells him. “But you can do that yourself. I don’t want to be responsible for cutting your throat or something.”

Just as well - if Hugh was gazing at Paul’s face at close range his brain would short-circuit.

While Paul attempts to trim his beard into a presentable form, Hugh sets up his laptop in the kitchen.

Paul takes another shower to get all the itchy hair off of himself, and then puts on one set of the interview clothes - black pants and a light blue button-down shirt.

He grimaces at himself in the mirror. _The image of everything I don’t want to be._ The face of some generic guy who probably doesn’t give a shit about the destruction of the ecosystem, the evils of capitalism, government oppression - just getting a good job, making a buck. He takes a deep breath, sighs it out, and exits the bathroom.

Hugh puts a hand over his mouth when Paul enters the kitchen. “Oh my lord, Paul.”

“That bad, huh?”

“No! You look really good. Really different. Dressed to get a job.”

Paul rolls his eyes, blushing. “If you say so.”

“Okay, so sit down. We’re going to write you a resume. Tell me everything you’ve ever done that sounds like a job.”

“Um… nothing?”

“Did you volunteer in high school? Did you join any groups? Did you do any projects in exchange for a place to stay?”

“No?”

Hugh gives him a pointed look. “I can’t help you if you don’t give me anything to work with.”

He sighs. “Okay… Uh… in 10th grade I was in the Outdoors Club for maybe three months?” Hugh types it in. “I babysat for my neighbor a couple times, probably when I was 14?”

“What else?”

“One summer, two years ago, I worked on a farm in exchange for food and a place to stay.”

“You weren’t going to tell me that?”

“I forgot.”

“That’s a _job_ , Paul. We can use that.”

Hugh manages to wheedle more details out of Paul and before long he has a list of things Paul has done. Occasional carpentry (in squats, but nobody needs to know that), the farm work, the school activities, a few more slightly exaggerated jobs.

“This is a pretty patchy job history, but it’s a lot better than you led me to believe. Now we just need to come up with some reasons you can tell people you went between jobs for so long.”

“Traveling?”

“Sure. You probably need to be more specific, though, if someone asks you.” Hugh taps the table with his fingernails thoughtfully. “I’ll probably need some time to edit this up for you, but you should have it when you go. Give me a little while to finish it?”

Paul shrugs. “Sure.”

“Can you help me out and go grocery shopping for me? I have nothing to eat and I’m going to be run ragged this week with school. I’ll give you money.”

“Of course.” He grimaces. "I'm changing out of these bougie clothes first though."

 

When Paul returns from the corner grocery a while later, Hugh shows him the file he’s been working on. “You can probably just go around to a bunch of stores and give them this. A lot of places make you fill out their applications though. I didn’t embellish much, just… put it in terms I think employers like to see.”

Paul looks at the screen, displaying a businesslike looking list of his so-called achievements, jobs, and skills. “Wow, Hugh, I - thank you.” He laughs. “I almost look like someone who’s had a job before.”

“There’s one problem though. You don’t have a phone or a computer. It’s almost impossible to get hired without an email address, let alone a phone, these days. I’m not really sure how you can get around that.”

“I do have an email address. I haven’t checked it in maybe three months, but I do have one. How much does a cell phone cost? I assume it’s more money than -” He rustles around in his pocket, pulling out a chaotic wad of dollar bills and coins that he haphazardly counts. His current life savings. “Seven or eight dollars?”

Hugh chews his lip thoughtfully. “Well, let’s go back to the corner store and see how much the really cheap prepaid phones are. I can add it to what you owe me.” He narrows his eyes at Paul. “By the way, I mean it - it’s a loan. You have to pay me back when you get a job.”

“I owe you a lot more than a phone bill and twenty bucks worth of clothes,” Paul says solemnly. “Don’t worry, I’ll pay you back. Thank you for everything.”

Is Hugh blushing? “You can thank me,” he says, “once you find a job.”

 

Once they’ve set Paul up with a phone, and Hugh’s updated Paul’s resume, and printed him out 50 copies, Hugh writes Paul directions to the place where he usually tries to hitch a ride eastbound.

“I’m serious,” Paul says, watching this man help him out one more time. “I really owe you. Nobody’s done anything for me like this - in a long time.” The unspoken question hangs in the air - _why are you doing this_?

Hugh looks up, meeting Paul’s eyes for a moment before he returns to writing. “You seemed like you needed a kickstart. And I like helping people.”

 _So I_ am _a charity case_ , Paul realizes dejectedly.

“But I also like you. And I like Tilly. And I want you both to be happy, and find the things you want to do. I mean, I think being a doctor is my calling, even if medical school is awful. I wonder what things would be like for you if… you found your calling.”

 _So I’m_ not _a charity case?_

Hugh tears the paper out of his notebook and hands it to Paul. “Anyway, here. If you go back to that same bus stop from yesterday, but go across the street, you can catch the bus in the other direction. I hope this makes sense." He laughs. "But now you can call me if it doesn’t."

“Thanks.” Paul’s ready to leave. A handshake feels too formal, a hug feels too familiar.

But Hugh’s a hugger, and he spreads his arms. “Can I hug you?”

It’s the best hug Paul has ever had. Hugh’s broad shoulders make him feel small, and safe, and appreciated. And he’s touch-starved, so if nothing else he would stand here forever if he could, but he pulls back before he thinks the length of the hug is going to get awkward.

“I’ll probably be out your way next month,” Hugh says. “I hope I’ll have time to stop by.”

“Me too,” Paul says. “We always like seeing you.”

And with that, he waves a little awkward wave, picks up his backpack, and heads out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "bougie" is short for "bourgeois" (check out [the Urban Dictionary's 2nd definition of "bougie"](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bougie) for the one I prefer, although they're wrong about the pronunciation, we always pronounce it "boo-zhe")


	5. all our little wishes have gone dry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's more angsty, but I promise it won't all be this way. They just need to get through some stuff.

For three days in a row, Paul hitches a ride into Stockton and walks around for hours, so many hours he feels like his feet are going to fall off. Armed with a stack of the resumes Hugh printed for him, he goes into every business he sees and asks if they’re hiring.

Most places aren’t hiring.

At one coffee shop, he’s asked how much barista experience he has. Well, none, he admits, and he’s turned away.

At a grocery store, the manager tells him everyone has to get drug tested. “What are you, the fucking cops?” Paul snaps. The manager just gapes at him until Paul whirls around and stalks out.

At multiple other places, he’s forced to rewrite his entire resume onto a job application form that asks for more information than Paul can even give. “Previous address? Who even cares?” Paul grumbles as he writes down his parents’ old address, literally the last place anyone could have even sent him mail.

It’s degrading, asking for the means to survive. It almost makes him miss living by his wits, shoplifting, dumpster diving, all that. Until he comes home each night to a house that’s drafty, broken-down, with no plumbing or electricity, and he just wants to take a shower and drink a cold beer and eat hot food and maybe read by something other than a flashlight.

Even with these dreams in front of him, after three days of job searching, he’s demoralized. He wants to call Hugh and ask him for advice, or at least complain to him, but he has the feeling Hugh’s just going to say, “It’s tough, but you have to keep going, that’s the way it is.”

“The way it is is bullshit,” he complains to Tilly instead.

“At least you have job experience,” she says sourly. Paul had tried to replicate what Hugh had told him about resumes to help Tilly draft her own - and where Paul had had hidden reservoirs of experiences that he could put on a resume, Tilly had… nothing.

“Did you ever babysit?”

“Are you kidding? People did not trust me with their kids. They thought I was too weird. I dunno, I love kids, but their parents hated me. I got into a lot of trouble when I was 13.” She stares at her hands. “And 14. And 15. And 16…”

“What kinds of jobs don’t need experience?” Paul wonders out loud.

“Well, I can think of a few,” she says, raising her hand and ticking off the options on her fingers. “Drug dealer, prostitute, drug manufacturer, bank robber, stripper…” Paul gives her an irritated look. “Just considering my options. You’re either prostituting yourself at a regular job or on the street. Don’t be such a prude, anyway.”

“I’m not being a prude.”

“Then why are you giving me that awful look?”

“I don’t think you really want to _do_ any of those things.” And they’re not on his list of _ways to keep Tilly safe_.

“Do you want to work at a fast food place?” she snaps back. “Like, really?”

Paul sighs. “I just want to do something different.”

 

The next day he decides to take a break, heading to the roadside park at the other end of town with his sketchbook. He settles on a weathered picnic bench and begins to sketch the trees that line the edge of the lawn.

“You live around here?” comes a gravelly voice as Paul’s examining the way the branches of the tree stretch upward, striving for new growth, fanning out.

Paul looks toward the source of the voice, an older balding white man with a cane, a little bent over, slowly approaching from the same direction Paul came. The man smiles at him.

“For a couple months,” he finds himself admitting, against his better impulses.

“I thought I’ve seen you before,” the man says, hobbling over to the other side of the picnic table and sitting down without asking, to Paul’s dismay. “Don’t find many young people settling here anymore. You live on the main road?”

“Why do you ask?” Paul asks in his most level voice.

“I just see you walking out there sometimes. What do you do all day?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“It’s tough out there these days,” the man goes on, almost as if he hadn’t heard, or cared what Paul’s response was. “All these broken down homes, no one living in them.”

 _He knows._ Paul gets up abruptly, gathering his pencils and pens and notebook.

“I’m not trying to scare you off. I know what you’re doing over there, and I don’t care.” Paul pauses, looking down at the older man. “Richmond Tharp owns all the houses on that side of the street and hasn’t given one shit about them in years. I miss seeing people out and about in this town, what’s left of it. So no, I don’t care if you live there, the place looks better just for having someone in it.”

“Do you know him? Richmond Tharp?”

“I used to. We were friends, a long time ago. He’d probably remember me.” The man looks Paul in the eye. “Look, the sheriff’s deputies are sons of bitches. I’d much rather you all stick around than see that house fall to pieces. Do you know how _depressing_ it is to watch your whole town go to shit around you? Almost makes a man want to move to a nursing home.” He chuckles and clears his throat. “I’m Edward Smith. I live across the street from you and down a ways, near the gas station. The blue house with the little porch. Come say hello sometime.”

“Thanks,” Paul says. “That’s really nice of you, but we’ll be okay.”

 

Later that afternoon, Paul is doodling mushrooms, sprawled out on the living room floor, when Tilly bursts in. Her face is glowing. “ _I got a job!!!_ ” she shouts, jumping up and down.

“For real?” Paul demands, getting to his feet. “Where?”

“A construction company in Stockton, they need someone to be a general laborer on a big project. Running around moving things. They said I can learn a lot and maybe move up. I could maybe learn something about how to fix this house up!” Tilly’s eyes are shining.

“Congratulations,” Paul says solemnly, giving her a big hug. “I’m really happy for you.” And he is. She deserves this.

“Also I met another _woman_ who works there and she actually lives several miles further east and we’ll be on the same shifts and she’ll give me a ride both ways! I don’t have to hitch anymore! And I’m going to be making EIGHT dollars an HOUR!”

“Eight dollars an hour? Maybe we can buy this house sooner than we thought,” Paul realizes. He sits back down on the floor and starts writing calculations in his sketchbook.

“Are you going to _celebrate_ with me?” Tilly demands, standing over him as he writes.

“In a minute, I need to add some things up.”

“This money is mine, Paul. I mean, we’re going to share it. But also, you don’t get to decide how I spend it all. I have to buy more work clothes - my new coworker gave me her old stuff for the first day, she is _amazing._ ” She pauses. _“_ But if you can’t buy yourself a razor, I will.”

Paul glares up at her. “Why do you care?”

“Hugh doesn’t like your bearded look.”

“How the hell do _you_ know that?”

Tilly giggles and punches him on the shoulder. “I’ve already said too much. Hey, I’m making window quesadillas if you want some.” Tilly, in her unending brilliance and creativity, had come up with the idea to angle a window to catch the rays of the sun and make reasonably warm quesadillas without the need for a stove.

“Yeah, sure,” Paul says, absentmindedly tasting the future quesadillas and hot sauce on his tongue as his mind whirls with thoughts of Hugh.

 

Two more weeks pass. Paul hasn’t found a job. He hasn’t even gotten a call back from a place. The failure is starting to burn.

Tilly goes off to work every day. She’s gotten _paid_. She has more money than she’s ever had in her whole life, and she has stories. Stories about her coworkers, about her ride to and from work, about getting to go out to lunch.

And on the weekends she’s more cheerful than ever, bounding around the house cleaning and fixing things up. Paul joins her sometimes, doing what he can.

But her improving mood and enthusiasm draw an increasingly sharper contrast with Paul’s despair.

Over those two weeks, their garden fails - slowly at first, and then spectacularly. They can’t carry enough water to keep things hydrated - Hugh was right.

They shouldn’t have bought or planted tomatoes this late in the season, it turns out. They didn’t know. The garden store didn’t tell them.

They didn’t have fertilizer.

The carrots are growing, but everything else is on its way out.

Tilly brushes it off when Paul complains to her about it one evening as they sit on the porch steps drinking beer. “Well, we learned something,” she says. “We’ll try again.”

Paul looks at the desiccated tomato plants and sees his hopes shrivel up alongside them. It’s okay for Tilly - she has somewhere else to put her energy. He was wrong to think that he could have anything different than failure.

 

Paul spends another three days in Stockton in some outlying neighborhoods, looking for places that are hiring. But he spends a lot of time just sitting and thinking, in random vacant lots, on benches at bus stops. On the first day, Paul has a thought he can’t shake, a fear that only grows. What if he never finds a job? What if he can’t build the life he’s been dreaming of? What if Tilly goes off without him and he’s all alone? Maybe it’s time he hedged his bets.

The day he spends at home after those lonely days only solidifies this fear. Maybe he should move on.

“I’m thinking of going back to Minneapolis,” he tells Tilly that night when she walks in the back door.

“You’re _what_?” she demands, throwing her backpack on the floor at his feet, her face contorting. “What about _us_? What about buying this house? What about everything?”

“I haven’t found a job. I’ve been looking for over a month. Face it, it’s not going to happen. And it’s too isolating here, and if I can’t find work I don’t even know why I would stay here. Maybe I should go back where I know more people. Maybe I wouldn’t need a job then.” The words ring a bit hollow, especially in the face of Tilly’s rage.

“I cannot believe you would even _think_ of abandoning me after everything we’ve been through.” She crosses her arms, her cheeks turning red. “I thought I could trust you.”

“You _can_ trust me. That’s why I’m talking to you about it.”

Tilly tucks her long hair behind her ears as she glares at him. “I made it work out here. _You_ make it work. I thought you were my _friend_. I thought we were in this together.”

He shakes his head. “I am, I’m just… not cut out for this. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t even look at me right now. Just get out of my face.” She moves toward the stairs and then whirls back around, picking up her backpack. “No, on second thought, I don’t even want to be in the same house with you right now. Call me when you’re ready to grow the fuck up.” She has tears in her eyes and he hates that he’s the cause of them.

But “Where are you going?” is all he can manage to say.

“If you were my _friend_ , I’d tell you. But if you were my friend, I wouldn’t be leaving!” she hisses as she stalks out the door, slamming it behind her.

Paul walks into the living room and looks out the gap between the boards on the window. Tilly’s walking down the street towards the edge of town, holding their cell phone to her ear.

He just did one of the worst things he could do to hurt his best friend and it’s no wonder she’s walked out on him.

 

Paul drinks the last two beers in the house, sitting upstairs in what he’s thought of as his room for many weeks now.

He doesn’t sleep well that night. At some point, waking up again, he realizes it’s because Tilly’s gentle snoring no longer fills the house with soft rhythmic background noise.

He stares at his pile of belongings, spread out across the floor: his spare clothes, his notebook, his field guide, the toothbrush Hugh gave him, his backpack. Everything he owns in the world is here.

The road is calling to him again. If he can’t make it work here, he can just start _going_ again. He knows full well that the lure of travel is the dangling possibility of being able to outrun his problems - if only he gets far enough away maybe he can leave this stench of failure behind too.

But ruminating doesn’t make staying feel any better either.

At daylight he packs up his stuff, as well as all the food he can carry. He walks through every room in the house, inhaling the still-dusty smell, remembering their time here.

When they arrived and they just didn’t want to go anymore.

When Tilly brought Hugh home - oh, _Hugh_.

The cops who threatened them and never came back.

He doesn’t relish leaving without saying goodbye. But Paul is always a disappointment to people. Hugh will be so let down. Well, one more reason to get going now, so Hugh can understand that fundamental truth sooner. At least Tilly has the phone now. She can at least pay Hugh for the phone.

Paul heaves a sigh. _Now or never_. And he walks out.

It’s a warm November day. Of course, every day is warm here, but it’s warmer than Paul expected, and his shoulders and back get sweaty fast. Has he gotten out of shape? His pack weighs him down more than he remembers it doing in the past.

Eventually he’s tired, and ready to wait for a ride. He plops down on his backpack and pulls out his spare cardboard, on which he scrawls “Anywhere East.” And then he waits.

He waits a long time. The sun bears down on him. He puts on his scarf. He drinks some water. He forces himself not to think about who he’s leaving behind. They will certainly not miss him for long.

A car pulls over. “I’m going to Vegas,” calls a middle-aged man out the window toward Paul.

“Sounds good,” Paul says, and gets to his feet.

 

Paul bails on this ride as soon as he can. The man listens to some horrible country music, some obvious bullshit about the flag, and hitting on girls, and drinking, and trucks. He smells like he’s been drinking beer all night, and Paul doesn’t want to talk, either to distract him, or to give the man more opportunities to determine that Paul might be someone he doesn’t like.

So when another small town comes up after twenty miles, Paul claims he needs to make a phone call, and the man lets him out at the gas station.

He goes over to the phone booth, waiting for the car to drive off. Then he leans against the phone booth and slides to the ground, letting out a deep sigh. This is certainly not how he’d romanticized getting back on the road again.

He eats some peanuts. He contemplates trying to hitch another ride. Well, that’s the only thing to do, if he’s going to Minneapolis.

As he gets to his feet, a voice shouts from across the parking lot, “ _Paul?_ ”

Must be some other Paul. He heads for the road.

“Paul!”

He doesn’t want to be recognized. He hears a car pull up next to him.

“Paul.”

He knows that voice now, and indeed, he looks over to see it’s Hugh. Driving a small red car, and looking very perplexed.

“What are you doing here?” Paul asks pointedly.

“I’m driving home from seeing my family for Thanksgiving.”

“Where’d you get the car?”

“My sister moved to New York for college. My dad finally got her car fixed up and I get to use it while she’s away.” He takes in Paul’s full look: backpack on his back, scarf around his head and neck. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“I’m going back to Minneapolis.” He can’t make eye contact as he says it.

“Why?” Hugh’s voice turns soft. Maybe sad. Maybe disappointed.

“I still can’t find a job. It’s pointless. And Tilly hates me now. So.”

“It took me eight months to find a job once. You’ve got to keep trying.”

“You probably know that Tilly already has a job. She’s -” He holds back the lump in his throat. “Better off without me.”

Hugh sighs. “Paul. That’s not true.”

“She left last night when I told her I was thinking of leaving. I don’t even know where she is, she wouldn’t tell me. She even took the phone.”

“She was probably really mad at you.”

“Exactly.”

Hugh snaps, “For fuck’s sake, Paul, I wish I could possibly understand why you’d want to go back to everything you told me you were tired of.”

“It’s a fucking pipe dream that we’d ever be able to buy that house, Hugh, and you know it. It’s only a matter of time until we get evicted. And then what?”

“You’d seriously rather go back to living in a squat in Minneapolis, which you told me you _hated_ , rather than keep trying to actually have a life you might prefer, in a place which is only somewhat unpleasant?” Hugh asks bitterly.

Paul opens his mouth to protest, and then closes it again. He fidgets. Finally, he admits, “Well, it sounds ridiculous when _you_ say it.”

Hugh smiles. “That’s because I’m right. Come on. Let me take you home.”

He stares at Hugh for a moment, stubbornness fighting against the truth in his head. He sighs and walks around the car to get in the passenger seat.

Hugh puts the car into gear and steers them back onto the road. “Paul, you are a whole-ass idiot sometimes, but I’m glad I ran into you. Put on your seatbelt.”

He looks over at Hugh as he complies. Hugh’s eyes are fixed on the road in front of him, hands resting on the top of the steering wheel. Even though it’s a warm day, he’s wearing a gray denim jacket and a light scarf and looks like a model, hair and beard perfectly trimmed.

Not for the first time, Paul feels like a complete wreck. It’s embarrassing that he keeps getting saved from himself by someone who has his shit together as well as Hugh does.

“What are you thinking about?” Hugh asks.

“Um… wondering how to get in touch with Tilly,” he lies, although it’s definitely the next thing on his mind at the moment.

Hugh reaches into his jacket pocket and tosses Paul his cell phone. “Call her. Your number’s in my phone.”

He stares at the phone. “Ugh.” Again, he fidgets. His normal mode is not apologies. It’s storming off and not speaking to people again. After a few minutes, he finds “Paul and Tilly” in the contacts list, and presses the dial button.

Ring. Ring. Ring. “Hugh, what’s up?” Tilly’s cheerful voice answers.

“It’s Paul, please don’t hang up on me.” Silence. “I’m sorry. You were… right. You were right.”

More silence. Finally: “I’m glad you agree. I’m at work now though, just on break. I’m staying with my friend Michael right now. I hope you haven’t done anything stupid.”

Paul catches Hugh’s sudden grin. _Oh no, he can hear this conversation_. “Just the normal amount of bad decisions. Hugh’s driving me back to the house.”

“Well, I’ll see you tonight. We’re gonna talk. But I’m glad you came to your senses.”

“Not all the way,” Paul jokes weakly. “Okay, see you tonight.” He presses the end call button and stares out the window. Hugh doesn’t seem inclined to question him.

Twenty minutes later they’re driving into town.

Paul wonders about inviting Hugh in to hang out for a while, but as soon as they pass the gas station, they both see the flashing lights.

Two sheriffs’ vehicles are parked, lights flashing, in front of the house. “Fuck,” Paul whispers. Hugh slows down as he approaches. Deputies are walking around the house while another one staples a large piece of paper to the door.

“Shit, Paul, that’s an eviction notice,” Hugh says as they roll by the house. Paul hunches down in his seat, dread growing in his chest.

Now he can’t go back to Minneapolis.

And he can’t go home, for a tenuous value of home.


	6. the boy to which I wish that I was singing

Hugh keeps driving. A few miles down the road he pulls over into a large driveway and turns off the car.

"I'm so sorry," he says.

Paul stares out the passenger side window. "If I hadn't left this morning, they could have arrested me.”

"Yeah," Hugh says somberly. Paul can feel Hugh's eyes on him as he thinks. “I’m really glad you’re okay.”

Paul nods. _Am I okay, though?_ He’s lost another home and if it weren’t for Hugh being with him now, he might have gotten right back on the road to Minneapolis again. He sighs, and tries to focus.

"Where can I take you?" Hugh asks softly.

Paul sighs. "I wish I knew. You made a good argument for staying and now I can't." He stares at his hands, fidgeting nervously with his backpack strap. “I wonder… if this guy I met can help us somehow.” He tells Hugh about meeting Edward Smith a while back, an encounter he’d put out of his mind, not thinking he needed help then.

"So all you have to do is ask Edward Smith to talk to Richmond Tharp for you," Hugh says thoughtfully. "And this guy thinks Tharp might let you stay?"

"Well, I don’t know. He seemed friendly, that’s all. Maybe he’d have a way to help us."

"That seems like a good plan.”

"On the other hand, maybe he got mad at us about something and phoned us in himself. I wouldn't put a single thing past cranky old people. Back in Minneapolis, one place I stayed, we ended up just sneaking in and out in the middle of the night, and we could really only sleep there, because his neighbor would flip her shit about us smoking on the front porch, or having house shows, or whatever. And my friend Raccoon’s grandparents actually *owned* the place."

Hugh snorts. "Your friend's name is Raccoon?"

"Most people don't use their real names in squats."

"Is Paul your real name?"

Paul whips his head around to face Hugh's insufferable smirk. He frowns at Hugh. "Yeah, it is. I could never find another name that stuck. For a little while I went by Aspen."

"Like the tree?"

“I always liked aspens... But the name didn't fit. How could I be a tree? I never put roots down anywhere," Paul jokes half-heartedly.

Hugh’s smile drops away. "Where should I take you?" He sounds uncomfortable, although Paul can’t place why.

"Tilly said she was staying with her friend Michael. I don't even know who that is, but maybe I can stay with them."

"Use my phone, call her. I'll take you wherever you need to go."

 _Could I ask to stay with Hugh? But Hugh would have offered, right?_ He can’t risk another boneheaded move right now, so he calls Tilly. She takes in the news stoically, and steps away from the phone to ask Michael about Paul coming to stay. "Yeah, Michael says there's room for one more.”

***

Hugh parks the car in front of a non-descript small warehouse in Stockton, in a largely industrial zone.

"You sure this is the address?"

"She did say it wasn't a house." Paul shrugs as he gets out of the car, hoisting his pack after him.

They follow a chain link fence on the left side of the building to a side door painted bright blue. Paul knocks loudly.

They wait. A bird chirps in a nearby scraggly tree. Hugh looks around nervously, tapping his foot, as the seconds drag out without a response.

Just when Paul is about to borrow Hugh's phone again, the door swings open and there's Tilly. Her hair is up in a ponytail, fanning out dramatically behind her and over her shoulders in messy tangled curls, over a paint-splattered t-shirt and work pants. She glares at him.

"Hey," Paul says tentatively.

Tilly glares for a moment longer, and then steps forward to throw her arms around Paul.

"You asshole," she scolds him affectionately. "I'm still mad at you. But I'm glad the cops didn't pick you up." She catches sight of Hugh. "Hugh!" she exclaims, releasing Paul to hug him fiercely. "It's so good to see you. Thank you for bringing this jerk over here. Come on in, I'll show you around and introduce you to Michael."

The interior of the building is a mostly open space, with small piles of paint, wood, glass, tools, and art supplies scattered around the concrete floor. To their left is a large loft over an enclosed space lined with four doors.

“How did you meet Michael?” Paul asks.

Tilly’s quiet, leading them over to one of the doors beneath the loft space. “When I was trying to make some money a couple months ago, she helped me out,” she says finally as she opens the door. Paul makes a mental note to get more details about that later.

A small black woman, her short coily hair fading down into shaved sides, sits in a metal folding chair with her back to them, typing away on a desktop computer. “Hey Michael, these are my friends!” Tilly says.

Michael looks over her shoulder and smiles as she gets up. “Hey,” she says. “Nice to meet you. I’m guessing you’re Paul,” she says, sticking out her hand. Her overalls are splattered with paint.

He nods. “And this is Hugh.”

“Good to meet you.” Hugh and Michael shake hands. “Well, welcome to the Discovery. My friend Ash owns this place - it’s a community space for artists and activists. I’m the live-in caretaker. And sometimes we have guests, like you.” Michael regards Paul seriously. “I’m sorry you lost your house. I can empathize, it’s happened to me too.”

Paul ducks his head. “It’s okay.”

“Just to let you know, we’re having a show tonight, electronic music, so it’ll be busy in here late,” Michael says. “We’ll have 50-100 people here starting around 9 PM.”

Paul groans inwardly. Not only has he been evicted from his nice quiet house but now he has to deal with blaring music at night.

“It’s really fun,” Tilly says with a warning look aimed directly at Paul. “Lots of cool people.”

He adopts a neutral face and holds back the eye-rolling.

 

***

Paul slings his pack to the ground in the storage room under the loft. “You probably want to get going,” he says to Hugh. “I’ve definitely imposed on you enough today.”

Hugh leans against the doorframe. “I have the day off. I thought I might stick around. I’m kind of into the idea of that show Michael mentioned.”

Paul raises his eyebrows. “Really.”

“You seem skeptical.”

“Somehow I didn’t take you for a electronic music fan.”

“I’m into all kinds of music. And I never get to go to shows anymore. And… this way I still get to hang out with you and Tilly.” Hugh looks down, suddenly shy. “If you want to, anyway.”

“Of course!” Paul says, what feels like a little too enthusiastically. He adds, tempering his tone, “I mean, I might not be the best company. But I’d really like to hang out more.”

Hugh’s grin could power the light bulb above Paul’s head. Paul turns away to dig his trail mix out of his backpack to hide his own grin. “Lunch?” he offers.

They join Tilly in the main warehouse space, watching Michael touch up an enormous galaxy mural on the far wall.

“She’s really talented,” Hugh muses around a mouthful of trail mix. Michael leans over on her stepladder to add more dotted stars to the upper left corner of the mural.

“She has so many talents,” Tilly says, her voice a bit dreamy. “She’s taking anthropology classes at the community college and she studies martial arts too.” She sighs, resting her chin on her hand. “I wish I was more like her.”

Paul looks over at Tilly, sitting on the other side of Hugh, and recognizes her facial expression. He snorts very softly, attracting Hugh’s attention.

“What?” Hugh asks him, equally quietly.

“She’s in love.”

Hugh looks at Tilly again and then back at Paul, and they share a smile. Paul’s heart flips, Hugh’s smiling face so close to his own, both of them in on a secret joke. It’s only when Hugh looks away again that Paul forces himself to drop the silly smile that he’s wearing.

After another minute of watching Michael paint, Tilly emerges from her reverie. “Guess I’d better get to work. I promised Michael I’d help build the stage for tonight.” She gets up and dusts off her behind.

“Need any help?” Hugh offers.

“Nah, we’ve only got one drill, and it shouldn’t be too hard, all the pieces are labeled. Thanks, though!”

Paul and Hugh polish off the trail mix. Then a few of Michael’s friends arrive and they switch to working on another project involving a pile of wood scraps in the corner. At this point, Paul decides he needs some quiet time to decompress. Tilly points him up to the loft, piled with pillows.

So Paul and Hugh sprawl out on the pillows near each other. Hugh’s reading some paperback sci-fi novel and Paul is sketching leaves. It’s almost December now, and he missed fall, and now it’s almost winter.

Hugh looks over at Paul’s notebook as he finishes the oak leaf drawing. “Hey, those are really good.”

Paul points out the different types of leaves. “Alder, oak, maple.”

“Do you do a lot of drawing?”

“Mostly just plants and trees. And mushrooms.”

Hugh reaches over to trace the maple leaf with his finger. “I’ve never lived anywhere with much in the way of seasons. I hear fall is really nice in other places.”

“I missed fall this year. First time ever, really.” Paul sighs. “If I’d gone to Minneapolis I’d probably just have freezed my ass off all winter and drank too much, but… I also like the snow. Gonna miss winter too.”

“Did you ever think about trying to find a job related to your art?”

Paul laughs. “It’s not ‘my art.’ It’s just sketching. It’s relaxing.”

“You’re just really good at it, that’s all,” Hugh replies softly.

Paul’s breath audibly catches in his throat, his heartbeat speeds up. He coughs to cover up his awkwardness. “Thanks,” he says casually at last.

“My main talent is just getting things done,” Hugh says. “I’m not very creative, but I always get it done.”

 _You’re also the nicest person I’ve ever met_. He tries to translate this thought into something he isn’t too shy to say aloud. “Not only are you working your ass off to be a doctor, you helped me out a lot. I think that’s a talent too.”

Hugh smiles, shyly avoiding meeting Paul’s eyes as he traces another leaf on the page. “I hope my help pays off for you soon.”

“Paul!” Tilly shouts from the floor. He crawls over to the edge of the loft to look down at her. “I’m taking a break, and we’re going to talk now,” she orders, shaking a hammer up at him. Paul looks over at Hugh, rolling his eyes.

“Sorry, I have to go apologize for being such an ass.” Paul gets to his feet.

“Wait,” Hugh says, and Paul looks down at Hugh as he rolls over and sits up. “I… know things are really hard for you, and I can’t honestly say I understand it all. But I really admire how you keep trying. And how much you want the best for your friends.”

His heart flutters in his chest as he stares down at Hugh’s earnest, upturned face, his big brown eyes, the gray scarf draped so well around his neck. His cheeks are heating up. “If you say so.”

The talk with Tilly goes about how Paul expects. They go into the storage room and sit on the floor. She tells him precisely how abandoned she felt, how hard it was to call her coworker and ask for a ride back to Stockton because she felt stranded. Paul acknowledges he was taking out his bad mood on her. But he was hurt that she walked out on him before he’d even had a chance to talk it out with her. She apologizes. He apologizes. They hug.

“Don’t make big life decisions without me, okay?” Tilly asks as they separate from the hug. “We’re supposed to be in this together. I’ve been really happy lately. I feel like things are going to turn out okay even without the house. And I think that’s because we’re friends. I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you.”

“Did you and Hugh partner up to flatter me?” Paul jokes dryly. “You do realize what a jerk I’ve been, right?”

Tilly raises her eyebrows. “Oooooh, is he flirting with you?” Paul doesn’t answer. “Well, he’s right, you know, whatever he said about you. And one of you needs to make a move.”

Paul snorts. “There won’t be any move-making, Tilly. He’s just that nice, that’s all.”

She just laughs at him.

 

***

 

The show that night is smaller than Paul feared, but larger than he can handle. He awkwardly bobs his head through the opening set, standing next to Hugh, who happens to look even more amazing under the flashing lights. Then he retreats back to the loft to watch the action from a distance. Tilly throws herself into the fun, dancing and talking with people, even though she can be her own kind of hermit sometimes. But she always seems to be close to Michael, he observes with some amusement.

Hugh seems to become very popular very fast during the show, and even dances with a couple of people, Paul notices with a pang of unwarranted jealousy, before forcing himself back to sketching. Then he starts drawing the house. Their house. _Home_.

He can almost smell the dusty breeze in his room.

He has to get the house back somehow.

Can Edward Smith help them? Or is he somehow the cause of their eviction?

These anxious thoughts cycle through his brain over and over until Paul can’t take it anymore. He puts down his pencil and clambers down the ladder to grab a beer. Maybe he’ll be able to focus on his drawing better that way.

Later in the evening, during the main set, Michael joins Paul up in the loft with a couple more beers.

“I hate these shows,” Michael admits, prying the caps off both beers before handing one to Paul. “I have to organize them because I kind of run the place, and that’s how we pay the rent here, but… I’d much rather just sit and read a book, you know? Or maybe talk with a friend or two.”

Paul knows. They clink bottles and drink, staring down at the revelers.

He picks out Hugh on the floor, dancing by himself this time, then realizes what he’s doing, and sighs.

After a moment, Michael says, “I always like watching people at these events, though. Like maybe I’ll learn how to be more competent at being a human by observing people in their natural habitat.” She laughs self-consciously. “Sorry, I probably sound like a total weirdo.”

Paul shakes his head vigorously. “No, I absolutely know what you mean.” He picks up his sketchbook from next to him, flipping to some sketches of the party. “I’m working on learning to draw people. Probably easier than talking to them. But I prefer drawing plants and animals, honestly.”

Michael gives him a knowing grin. “I feel like you and I might understand each other.”

Before long, Paul shows her some of his nature sketches, and then they’re talking about their favorite plants and animals.

Michael likes palm trees and squirrels; she recounts a story about an industrious squirrel friend she had once when she was living on the street, and they’re both laughing.

 

Michael has to go chase people out of the warehouse at 2 AM, when she can barely stay awake any more, and a few minutes later Hugh makes his way up the ladder. “Well, I’m way too tired to drive home,” he says, plopping down next to Paul. “Michael says I can sleep up here.” He yawns. “It’s pretty comfortable, actually. Maybe I’ll actually get some sleep.” He pulls a thick fluffy blanket off a nearby cushion and wraps himself up in it. The scene reminds Paul of his visit to San Francisco the month before, Hugh curled up in bed with his book. “Mmmm,” Hugh says contentedly.

Paul contemplates Hugh’s face, eyes half-closed, smiling. He’s far too adorable and it almost hurts.

“Well, my stuff’s down in the storage room… I guess I’m sleeping down there. See you in the morning.” Paul gets to his feet briskly before he can make a fool of himself.

As soon as Paul’s lying in his sleeping bag, he’s thinking of Hugh. He wishes he’d been up there from the beginning, so he could lay out his sleeping bag near Hugh, so he could smile at him from across the floor, so he could reach out and pull him close, so he could -

_Dammit._

It’s never cold in this part of California, it seems, but the uninsulated warehouse air sends a chill over his skin, these 60-something temperatures that pass for winter nights.

How intensely he wishes Hugh were in here to chase away the cold. He has to settle for pulling his sleeping bag tighter around himself, daydreaming of a human touch.

 

***

 

“Paul?”

He groans into the pile of clothes that passes for his pillow.

“Paul?”

He rolls over and pulls the sleeping bag away from his eyes. Hugh’s perfect bright face is two feet away, lit by the first rays of sunlight coming through the window behind him. He’s kneeling on the floor next to Paul.

“Jeez, Hugh, what?” he grumbles, closing his eyes again.

“I’m heading home,” Hugh says in a low voice. “I have class at 8:30. I just wanted to say, I’m glad I ran into you yesterday. It was nice to hang out.” He touches Paul’s hand, still curled around the top of the sleeping bag.

“Don’t go.” His sleep-addled brain is drawing words from far too deep in his subconscious mind. He pulls the sleeping bag over his face to hide his burning cheeks. If Hugh doesn’t think of him as the biggest mess already…

Hugh laughs softly. “Sorry. Hey, look at me for a second.” Paul hazards a look at him, raising his eyes above the top of the sleeping bag. “Sleepy you is very adorable, but I do have to go. I’ll probably be able to come by next Friday?”

 _Adorable?_ “It’s Monday now. That’s a long time. What if I get a job and I have to work next Friday?” _Oh no,_ s _leepy me is a needy wreck._

Hugh laughs again. “I know, but, you know. I have responsibilities too.” Paul nods. “Be safe, be well.”

“I’ll try.”

Hugh ruffles his hair. “Call me next Friday and I’ll let you know whether I can make it.”

On some impulse Paul would normally stuff down, he reaches out of the sleeping bag to put his hand over Hugh’s where it’s resting on the floor for balance.

Hugh inhales shallowly and his lips stay parted, but he doesn’t move.

They stare at each other for a long moment. Paul wants to believe that he’s not just imagining the intense look in Hugh’s eyes now.

“Hugh, I -” Paul starts hesitantly, his breath catching in his throat.

Hugh leans over him.

And keeps coming closer.

Paul tilts his head toward Hugh, closing his eyes as their lips touch. Hugh’s lips are soft and he tastes like breath mints. It’s the most delicious sensation he has experienced in a long time.

When Hugh sits back up, he’s shaking his head slightly in apparent disbelief. “I… didn’t think I was going to do that just then.”

“I’m glad you did.” Seeing Hugh’s discomfort continue, he adds, “I mean, if you’re glad you did.”

Hugh smiles. This time the kiss is longer, softer, and fuller. And when Hugh pulls away this time there’s no uncertainty in his expression.

“I’m _not_ glad that I still have to go to class now,” Hugh says, moving his hand so his fingers rest on top of Paul’s. “And I won’t see you until maybe next Friday.” His fingers trace Paul’s knuckles, and a rueful smile crosses his face. “I should have just kissed you last night when I had the chance.”

Paul groans. What they could have gotten up to last night instead of him lying in his sleeping bag alone thinking about Hugh who was only upstairs in the loft…

Hugh continues, “But it’s no use thinking about that now.”

“Do you have to be so reasonable?” Hugh smirks as he starts to get up, but Paul grabs his wrist. “Maybe… I could come see you before then?”

Hugh smiles. “I wish, but I’m so busy with school, I don’t have a lot of downtime.”

Paul sits up, letting his sleeping bag fall down around his waist, cool air making him shiver. The dam on all Paul’s feelings and desires breaks and he lets them spill out in a way that would have embarrassed him only minutes before. “Text me. Tell me your schedule. I’ll come see you. Even if it’s only for a few hours.”

Hugh runs the tips of his fingers down Paul’s left forearm, raising goosebumps as he goes. “Okay. Don’t neglect the job hunt on account of me, though.”

“Too late. I won’t be able to get any job searching done until I see you again,” Paul promises as he reaches with both hands for Hugh’s face, pulling him into a sloppy kiss. He slips his tongue into Hugh’s mouth. The vibration of Hugh’s moan tingles on his lips and he runs his fingers up the back of Hugh’s head, the soft scratch of his hair like fire on his fingertips.

Hugh pulls away away again with a sigh. “I really have to go now. If this goes any further, I won’t make it to class,” he murmurs.

Paul bites his lip. “Yeah, you better go,” he says, against everything he’s feeling. “Before I make you stay.”

Hugh lets out a breathless laugh before his lips crash against Paul’s one more time. Then he gets to his feet. “I’ll see you soon,” he promises. Paul nods and lays back down, pulling the sleeping bag back up to his chin. Hugh smiles down at him and leaves, shutting the door softly behind him.

Paul squeezes his eyes shut. Hugh’s footsteps on the concrete floor fade away, followed by the distant slam of the door.

“Fuck,” he says softly under his breath. The crush he’s been trying to set aside has rushed back full force and more. At the very least, Hugh is attracted to him, and there’s no telling what could happen next, but he’s about to be useless for every minute until he can be next to him again.


	7. what is fire without the spark of hope?

Paul spends the rest of that day doing some job searching on Michael’s computer - once Michael shows him how that works - and applies to a couple jobs that have online applications. He even manages to log in to his long-neglected email account, although there isn't much to see. No messages from old friends.

As he works, he eats the last of the food from their old house: chips, beef jerky, and honey roasted peanuts. It's not much, and his stomach rumbles, but he's got about thirty-five cents in his pocket. So he drinks a lot of water and waits.

Fortunately, after work, Tilly brings home a bag of microwave burritos and a six-pack.

She and Paul hang out in the loft and chat and listen to music and eat and drink. Slowly, Paul feels like a human being again. Somebody who can relax. It helps that he’s in a buoyant mood because of Hugh, probably, but… it’s nice to be somewhere he doesn’t have to worry he could be evicted from.

On Tilly’s day off the next day, she and Paul and Michael go out for breakfast at a nearby diner. "Gotta fuel up for the big day," Tilly says brightly. Today, they're going to see Edward Smith.

The diner scene sends Paul back to so many weekend nights when he was a teenager, spent in his small town’s diner with his friends, drinking coffee and eating pancakes, laughing and arguing, trying to stretch out the hours until they had to go home. He misses those times, a lot.

Paul drinks way too much coffee along with his mushroom and cheese omelet, and gets the jitters. Michael eats an enormous plate of French toast and can barely move. Tilly scarfs toast and eggs and bacon, between work stories that make Michael laugh and smile shyly at her plate. The crush might be mutual.

Michael offers to split the bill, but Tilly insists on treating all of them. She smiles proudly when she says, “I'm paying,” to the waiter.

Someday he's going to treat them all to breakfast. Maybe every day for a week.

After breakfast, Paul and Tilly take a bus to their hitchhiking point, managing to catch a ride after only 30 minutes.

Paul’s heart is racing, not because he’s nervous to talk to Edward, to see if he can help them get their home back somehow, but because of Hugh. His warm eyes, the way his carefully trimmed beard skims his jawline, his shoulders, his arms. His _voice. His smile. Those lips_. The way he cares so much and gives so much and works so hard and…

It’s truly inconceivable to him what a man like that can possibly see in a mess like him.

Paul can’t bear to even look toward “home” when they pass it, although Tilly is glued to the opposite window, soaking up every moment. “We’ll be back,” she whispers.

Their ride drops them off right in front of Edward Smith’s house, just down the street from their old place. Paul stares at the weathered blue house for a moment.

“Do you think he’ll really help us?” Tilly asks again.

“Only one way to find out.” Paul combs his fingers through his hair (too greasy, he needs a shower) and then climbs the stairs. He’s vaguely aware of how much more confidence he feels approaching Edward this time. He should feel nervous. He should feel scared. He should feel the crisis situation he’s in, basically homeless again. He only feels a peculiar invincibility.

He knocks and waits. Tilly chews her fingernail.

The door swings open to reveal Edward Smith, wearing a white short-sleeve button-down and high-waisted beige trousers, leaning on his cane. “Oh!” the elderly man exclaims as he takes the sight of them in. “It’s you. I wondered what happened the other day. You’re okay, I hope? Come in.”

He gestures to the right, into his living room. “Please, sit down. Can I get you anything to drink? I have a pot of coffee on right now.”

Tilly’s eyes widen. “Yes.” Paul nods along with her. The jitters have gone away already, and there's no sense in turning down free coffee.

“It’ll just be a moment,” Edward calls as he ambles down the hall toward the back of the house.

The living room is a bit dusty, decorated as if it were a museum display from the 1970s: faded orange couch, dark brown armchair, dark wooden end tables. The curtains on the front window are drawn tightly closed, but the side window, facing the gray abandoned house next door, has its blinds completely raised.

“This is like my grandma’s house,” Tilly whispers.

Paul tries to get comfortable on the sagging orange couch. No luck. He perches on the edge and fidgets. Now the nerves are setting in a bit. Now they’re on Edward’s territory. Who knows what that means for them.

“Here you go,” Edward says as he reenters the room, two hugs of coffee in hand. Paul and Tilly take them eagerly. “Cream or sugar?”

“Yes, please, both!” Tilly says.

“Back in a moment.”

Tilly sets her mug on the end table next to her, while Paul blows on the coffee, trying to cool it.

“Does that really do anything?” Tilly asks.

“Why wouldn’t it? Evaporative cooling.”

She snorts. “Maybe if you had a big fan, it would. But keep blowing if it makes you happy.”

Edward sets a small carton of half and half and a sugar bowl on the end table next to Tilly, and hobbles over to the armchair, sighing as he lowers himself carefully into the chair.

“Now. What happened over there the other day? I saw the sheriffs. Even went over to check that big sign on the door. A 3-day eviction notice.”

“3-day eviction notice?” Paul asks.

Tilly stirs two spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee, then pours a generous amount of half and half on top, almost to the very top of the mug. She sips in satisfaction. Edward smiles at her before looking at Paul again.

“Well, you were trespassing. So an eviction notice is… somewhat of a formality. They could have arrested you for trespassing right away. But I suppose the eviction notice is to scare you off from coming back. It’s just a notice to say that if you don’t leave in 3 days the sheriffs can remove you.” Edward taps his chin as he thinks. “But anyway, what did you do? I didn’t see them arrest you.”

“We weren’t home at the time,” Paul says, cringing as he says it. He was on the road to Minneapolis, such timing: Wrong place, right time. “But my friend… was driving me back home and when we saw the cops we just kept going.”

“We want the house back,” Tilly says flatly. “Paul thinks you can help us. Can you?”

Paul shoots her an irritated look. For once, they need to be less direct. They need to lure Edward in, not scare him off.

Fortunately, Edward doesn't seem troubled. “Well, I can speak to Richmond,” Edward says thoughtfully. “But again, I can’t make you any promises. I hope he’d listen to me. Well, and there’s something else we should talk about.”

Paul and Tilly look at each other worriedly. “What’s that?” Paul asks.

“He’s not likely to simply let you back in if he’s kicked you out. You need to sweeten the deal. Offer him something he wants.”

Paul sighs. “With what?” _Goddamn capitalists_. “We don’t have that much money.”

“I have a job now,” Tilly says. “We could pay rent?”

“That house isn’t worth paying rent on!” Paul exclaims irritably. “I mean, look at this house, and then look at our house, and tell me it’s worth giving that guy any money.”

Tilly levels him with a sullen glare. “Do you want our house back, or are you going to be a stubborn asshole all day?”

"I-"

“I hate to interrupt your little disagreement,” Edward interjects tentatively.

“Sorry,” Tilly whispers. Paul looks at his hands.

“Well, it’s possible that Richmond doesn’t keep up that house because he doesn’t want the house anymore. It’s not worth it to him.”

“So?”

“Perhaps you can offer him a payment plan. You pay him rent for a few years and then you own the house.”

“You can _do_ that?” Tilly asks.

Edward smiles, clears his throat. “It is one possibility. I can think of a few others. Let me describe them to you, and see what you’d be willing to do.”

“You’re very generous to us,” Tilly says, blushing. “Why?”

“I don’t want my town to die.” His voice wavers slightly. “You feel like my last hope.”

 _Well, that’s no pressure at all_.

***

By the next Monday afternoon, Paul is worn out from job hunting and trying not to bother Hugh, who hasn’t called or texted. Paul texted him last Tuesday to say that they met with Edward and he was going to talk to Richmond Tharp. Hugh texted a smiley face back, and that was it.

There’s only so many different things an anxious guy can tell himself about a week of near-silence before he runs out of self-reassurances.

He walks to the payphone at the convenience store several blocks away (Tilly took the phone to work today) and dials Hugh’s number. It goes straight to voicemail, but at least he can listen to Hugh saying, “This is Hugh, leave me a message,” before the beep.

“Hi… it’s Paul. I - I just wanted to let you know - I still haven’t found a job, so uh, I’m probably not working Friday. And it looks like I’m free all the rest of the week if - if you want me to come visit. Okay, bye.”

He rolls his eyes hard at himself as he hangs up. _You’re pathetic._ His father’s voice echoes his own self-recrimination as he walks back to the Discovery.

Michael’s sprawled out on her back in the loft, listening to her CD player, when Paul returns.

She sits up, taking off her headphones, when Paul appears at the top of the ladder. “Hey, where’ve you been?”

“Making a phone call.”

“Hugh?”

Paul blushes. “I’m _starting_ to regret our conversation the other night,” he says pointedly. A late-night heart-to-heart with Michael a few days ago, and the aid of a couple beers, had Paul telling Michael what felt like way too much of his life story.

She smiles, a rare sight. “Well, I don’t.”

Paul collapses into the pillows next to Michael. “He didn’t answer his phone.”

“From what you said, he’s a busy guy. I’m sure he’ll call you back.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who wants to mess around with your heart.”

Paul clings to the words. “I hope you’re right.” She _is_ right, but Hugh could certainly do a lot better than a scruffy homeless unemployed uneducated-

“I just got back from class, and I should probably study. By the way, we’re doing another show here tonight,” she says, stuffing her CD player into her backpack. “Hip-hop. Starts at 8, I’m going to shut it down at midnight. I have an exam tomorrow.”

Paul nods and rubs the exhaustion out of his eyes with one hand. “Okay, that doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Do you think Tilly likes me?”

Paul eyes her warily. “What?” He heard her, but needs a moment to process it.

“Do you think Tilly likes me, I asked.”

He sighs. “She lives here. You should probably ask her.”

“But I asked if you _think_ she likes me.”

It’s obvious to him that Tilly is completely smitten with Michael, but he also knows that after a number of bad experiences, she prefers enjoying her crushes from afar. “I honestly don’t know,” he lies. “You should ask her yourself.”

Michael frowns. “She doesn’t talk about me?”

“We’re not that type of friends,” he says, which is true. Generally they have to pester things out of each other when it comes to crushes.

Michael looks down at her hands, then pulls a thick textbook from her backpack and settles back into the cushions with it. “Okay,” she says, the disappointment heavy in her voice.

***

Tilly comes home an couple of hours later. “Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul!” she shouts, slamming the door behind her.

“Yeah?” he grumbles from Michael’s desk, having exhausted another full day’s worth of job ads. Three applications in. God, he’s tired.

She bursts into the room, waving their little phone around, a sly smile lighting up her face. “You got a text. And a voicemail. I think you’re going to liiiike them…”

He grabs the phone from her to look. The text is from Hugh: _Sorry I missed yr call. I’m free Tue 8 PM. Come over? :)_

That’s all it takes for his heart to start racing. But there’s still the message to listen to.

“What’s the message?” he demands, already calling into the voicemail.

“You’ll see!” She leaves him alone, and a moment later he hears her boots clomping up the ladder to the loft, and the creak of her walking across the floor.

“Hello, this is a message for Paul Stamets,” the message begins. “My name is Steve, I’m the manager over at Stockton Burgers. I’d like to interview you this Friday at 10 AM. Please give me a call back and let me know.” Paul scribbles down the phone number with shaking hands.

“Tilly!” he shouts, hanging up the phone and getting to his feet. “I gotta stop letting you take the phone with you.”

“How will I gossip with Hugh about you then?”

***

When Hugh opens the door to his apartment on Tuesday night at 8 PM, Paul’s heart jumps into his throat. The man he hasn’t been able to get out of his head for more than five minutes since last Monday here, in front of him. A white-and-black striped tank top showing off completely ridiculous muscular arms, long black shorts hanging loosely off his hips, barefoot…

“Hi. Are you going to say hi?” Hugh interrupts Paul’s thoughts jokingly, and he jerks his head up. Hugh snorts and smiles at what must be an embarrassed expression. “It’s good to see you too. Sorry I've been so out of touch. School has been out of control.” He gestures down the hall. “My roommates are hanging out in the kitchen. Come to my room?”

Paul nods, following Hugh past the kitchen. The laughing voices of two people he doesn’t want to make eye contact with, because he’s about to kiss Hugh again and that’s commanding 100% of his attention.

By the time they’re standing in Hugh’s room and Hugh closes the door, Paul’s heart is beating rapid-fire in his chest. _Don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up..._

Hugh turns from the door to face him and smiles. “How was your trip? I’m glad you made it.”

Paul blinks a couple times. “Oh. It was fine. You know. The bus.”

Hugh sits on his bed, bringing his feet up to cross his legs in front of him. “You can sit if you want,” he says.

Paul sits on the edge of the bed to Hugh’s left, nervously rubbing his right thumb against the top of his left hand. “How was your day?”

“Fine. A lot of classes and studying." He pauses. "Any progress with Edward Smith?”

Paul shakes his head. “We talked to him. He said he would help. I’m just waiting for him to call back.” He perks up suddenly. “And I have an interview on Friday.”

Hugh lights up. “Oh, wow, congratulations! That's so exciting! Where at?”

“A burger place. Kind of near the warehouse, actually. Too bad we can’t stay there.”

“You can't? But would you want to though?”

“We haven't talked about it, but there's not really room for all of us, and it's not _ours_. Michael hasn't said anything, but... I'd rather never live in a place that does shows if I can help it. I got that out of my system years ago. But if we moved back out of town we’d have a 15-mile commute and it’s actually really nice for Tilly to take the bus to work. I don’t really want to hitchhike every day. And in at least one way, she actually prefers living at the warehouse.”

“So things with Michael are going well?” Hugh asks with a laugh.

“Well, there isn’t any _thing_ yet.” Paul sighs. “But there might be. I know she misses having her own room, and-” He stops talking when Hugh puts his hand on top of his fidgeting hands, stops moving except for turning his head to look over.

“You care about her a lot.”

Paul rolls his eyes. “Of course, she’s my best friend. I don't know what I'd do without her.”

“So you do have a soft side,” Hugh teases as his fingers gently stroke the top of Paul’s hands.

Paul inhales sharply, distracted by the touch. “I usually deny it. But you have a way of bringing it out.”

Hugh slides his other hand around Paul, squeezing his torso, and then under the hem of Paul’s shirt, up his back. “I like your soft side.”

This seems as good a time as any to dispense with the talking, although Paul still adores the sound of Hugh’s voice. He extracts his hands from under Hugh’s fingers and pulls Hugh’s face to his, both of them breathing in suddenly as their lips touch again.

Hugh tastes of salt and mint - he probably brushed his teeth right before Paul arrived. Their mouths soften under each other’s touch, and the kisses are slow, exploratory, tongues sliding together and then apart, breathy gasps occasionally breaking the silence.

When Paul sucks Hugh’s lower lip between his teeth, Hugh tugs Paul down onto the bed beside him, his sparkling eyes and smile drawing Paul in as much as the arms pulling him close.

***

They get up a bit late the next morning, sleep-deprived but cheerful, and have to rush to leave the house. There’s no time, thankfully, to engage in any awkward conversation with Hugh’s roommates.

Paul has no right to feel this good this early in the morning. Granted, he’s exhausted, but all the hormones are making him almost giddy. Not that he is comfortable showing it.

“There’s a little place a few blocks away that I get coffee at,” Hugh says. “It’s a lot cheaper than the campus coffee shops. Nothing fancy though.”

Paul snorts. “Fancy coffee is when you have to pay for it.”

Hugh stops suddenly. “Hey, you should be going the other way. Your bus stop’s over there.”

He’s right, of course, but… “I’m not in a rush. Can I… go with you? To your class? I mean, I won’t stay, but…”

Hugh beams at him. “That would make my morning so much better.”

“Okay.” A grin breaks over Paul’s face before he can stop himself. He reaches for Hugh’s hand.

He’s brought up short by a memory. _“We can’t hold hands, Paul. Not here.”_ His ex Sean’s voice, at a noisy party, almost shouting into his ear. Paul asked who was going to stop them. _“I know these people. Just - don’t.”_

Paul scowls and drops his hand, the disappointment of that moment arising all over again. That Sean was never willing to be public about their relationship, that eventually Paul knew it would never work because Sean was never willing to act like anything was going on, so maybe he wasn’t that important to Sean after all, could never be that important to anyone…

“Paul?” Hugh’s giving him a concerned look, touching him on the shoulder. Paul’s stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, mid-brisk walk, as if Hugh wasn’t in a hurry to get to class.

“It’s nothing,” Paul lies. “Just… not looking forward to going home.” He can’t bring himself to reach for Hugh’s hand again.

Still, when they’re standing on the crowded bus, hot cups of coffee in hand, Hugh seems only too happy to get as close to Paul as possible. Paul relishes standing next to him. What if this was their life, the two of them on their way to their daily lives after a wonderful night together? What if this could happen tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day…


	8. you're the one who left them unattended

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took a bit longer to generate, life has gotten super busy. But I'm definitely going to wrap this story up in 11 or 12 chapters, and (fingers crossed) before season 2 starts, so there are more exciting/dramatic things to come!

“Are you able to work nights, weekends, flexible schedule?”

Paul nods, stomach sinking at the prospect of selling his life to this job. Steve, the Stockton Burgers manager, scratches his clean-shaven chin as he scans Paul’s application one more time. He’s not that much older than Paul but he reeks of… success? Selling out? Or maybe that’s just his cologne. He’s dressed in crisp black slacks and a white polo shirt with the store logo. His brown hair is slicked back. He’s slimy.

“Do you have reliable transportation?”

Paul pauses, thinking through the question. He had a friend who was asked this question and it was a bit of a trick. He’s got his own two feet, doesn’t he? “Yeah.”

“Okay, when can you start?”

“I guess anytime. Tomorrow.”

“Great. We’re already short-staffed. Employees arrive at 10 AM. Here’s the paperwork you need to fill out. We’ll see you at 10 AM tomorrow.”

 _That’s it?_ Paul blinks.

Steve looks at him expectantly. “Any questions?”

Paul glances at the top of the small stack of papers thrust into his hand. A bunch of bureaucratic nonsense, no doubt, but he’s not about to give Steve any reason not to hire him. “Nope,” he says confidently. “Thanks.” He sticks out his hand and Steve shakes it. “See you tomorrow.”

He walks out of the little fast-food joint, looking at the plastic tables and vinyl booths he’ll soon be spending a lot of time staring at. His new home away from… not-home.

In exchange for $7.50 an hour.

His first real job.

He walks the three miles back to the warehouse, a smile growing on his face, nervousness clenching his chest. He’s going to have a _job_. He’s going to make money. He’s going to have an answer to the question, “What do you do?” besides “Draw. Hitchhike. Drink.” Maybe someday he and Tilly can pay rent. Or buy that house.

But first, he’s going to be able to pay Hugh back.

Paul imagines Hugh’s reaction when he tells him that he got a job. His smile widens. His cheeks are starting to hurt. Hugh will be even happier than he is.

Hugh is coming to visit today.

Paul checks the phone again. He’s carrying it today so Hugh can get in touch if necessary. No messages.

While waiting for the walk sign at a busy street, he looks at the papers Steve gave him again. Something about proof of work eligibility he needs to provide. A Social Security Number. A driver’s license? A birth certificate?

_Shit. Shit shit shit._

Tilly didn’t mention needing an ID for _her_ job.

 

Nobody’s home when Paul returns to the Discovery. He gets on Michael’s computer and does some research. Yes, he has to provide at least two documents to establish his identity and eligibility to work, and he has to do it within three days of starting a job. Plus he has to know his Social Security number. _By tomorrow._

As for identity, he last had a state ID years ago, and it was stolen from him along with all his other stuff that one night in New Jersey…

And he needs a birth certificate to get a state ID. The only people who would have a birth certificate for him, let alone a Social Security number, which he also needs to provide, are… his parents.

“Fuck!” he yells, slamming his palm on the computer desk.

The ensuing silence is underwhelming. His hand hurts. He wants to cry. He runs his hand through his hair, momentarily thrown off by the cleanliness of his hair, remembering he took a shower this morning.

Forcing himself to take deep breaths, he pulls the phone out of his pocket and stares at it. He still has his home phone number memorized. He’s always been good at details.

_Am I actually going to call them?_

_Do they even still live there?_

_Is getting a job worth having to talk to them?_

_Will Mom cry?_

He squeezes his eyes shut tightly. _Just fucking do it, Paul. You need this._

Before he can argue with himself, he dials the number.

_Ring._

His hands are damp with sweat.

_Ring._

_“_ Hello?” comes the unmistakable tired voice of his dad.

Paul hangs up and throws the phone into the corner.

 

“You look like shit,” Tilly announces when she comes home from work, seeing Paul sitting stone-faced in the loft. “What happened?”

“I got a job.”

Tilly squints at him. “You… got a job?”

“Yeah.”

“Holy shit, Paul! Congratulations!” She runs awkwardly the few paces across the cushions to crash down beside him and wrap her arms around him. “Where at?”

“Burger place.”

“ _Which_ burger place?”

“Stockton Burgers.”

She leans back to observe his stoic expression. “Why the fuck aren’t you happy about it?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you need, like, official state documents to get a job?”

She frowns. “Uh, nobody ever told me about that. I don’t have to have any. Who says? What do you have to have?”

“Apparently I need a Social Security card? And a driver’s license or state ID, or maybe a birth certificate?”

“What happens if you don’t have them?”

Paul sighs. “The manager might not let me work. It’s some federal government thing.”

“That sucks,” Tilly pronounces. “I guess my job doesn’t care too much about that. Can you get those things though?”

Paul sighs again, more deeply. “I think… I have to talk to my parents. It seems like something they’d have, at least the Social Security card, or the birth certificate.” He rubs the corners of his eyes with both hands and looks at her. “After all this shit it took to get to this point, I don’t know. I don’t want to deal with them.”

“Do you know how to reach your parents?” she asks, twirling some strands of hair around her fingers, staring at the cushion under her legs.

“I… already tried to call. My dad answered. I hung up.”

She nods sadly. “I’ve done that a few times with my mom.”

Paul crosses his legs under him and leans forward, bracing his head in his hands, elbows in on his knees. He wants to rock himself back and forth. “I can’t fucking talk to them, I can’t.”

Tilly puts a hand on his back, rubbing in circles. After a few moments, she says, “Hugh psyched me up to go to the interview for my job. He helped me practice what to say. I could help you?”

“I didn’t know that,” Paul mumbles. It’s nothing against Tilly, but he really wants Hugh here now.

“Or… somebody could call for you. I could start the call, and then hand the phone to you.”

He lifts his head. “You’d do that for me?”

“I’m not intimidated by your parents. I’d call them up and tell them to fuck off if you wanted.”

Paul laughs. “Okay.” The clock on the wall says 3 PM. “Hugh will get here around 5. Let’s wait then.”

 

Hugh holds Paul’s hand, even though he’s sweating, even though he’s squeezing so tightly he hopes he’s not hurting Hugh.

Tilly holds the phone. Paul’s parents’ number is already entered, the speakerphone is on. “I’m gonna call now. I’m gonna say just what we talked about.”

Paul bites his lip and nods. “Okay.”

She presses the call button.

_Ring._

_Ring._

_Ring._

_Ring._

“Hello?” Paul closes his eyes briefly, hearing his mom’s familiar cheer.

“Um, hi. This is Tilly. I’m a friend of Paul’s.”

“Paul? Oh my god.” His mom almost sobs out the words. “Is he okay? Is he safe?”

Paul squeezes Hugh’s hand harder. Hugh rubs Paul’s knee with his other hand, giving him a small reassuring smile.

“He’s here with me,” Tilly says. “He’s” - she smiles at Paul - “doing really good.”

“Why isn’t he the one calling?”

Paul’s mom is interrupting their script. Tilly raises her eyebrows at Paul, gesturing at the phone with her other hand. He sighs and lunges for the phone, fumbling to turn off the speaker as he does so.

“Hi Mom,” he says into the phone. “I’m here.”

“Oh Paul,” she breathes. “I love you, honey. I’m so glad you called. Hold on, I need to get your dad. Please, Paul, just stay on the line while I get him. Please don’t hang up.”

“Okay. I’ll wait,” he says. The line goes quiet, the phone clattering down. He closes his eyes, mouthing the word _shit_ over and over as he fights to control his panic.

“You’ve got this, Paul,” Tilly says, scooting closer and wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

“It’s going well,” Hugh tells him. “They’re talking to you. They miss you. They love you.”

Paul nods, refusing to open his eyes.

Eventually the phone clatters again, and he hears the speakerphone go on on the other end. “Paul, we’re both here, me and your dad.”

“Hi,” Paul manages, a lump forming in his throat. All his rehearsed lines are gone.

“Paul, I -” His mom is already breaking down. “I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” he asks warily.

She sniffles. “I’ve been working on what I’d say to you for years, and now I can’t remember the speech.” She laughs through her tears. “We’ve been to a lot of therapy, your dad and I.”

“What are you sorry for?” he asks again, letting the edge creep into his voice.

“I’m sorry for letting you go off and think we didn’t love you. I’m sorry for not supporting your dating choices.”

Paul grimaces. “Choices?”

“Paul, you know what I mean, I -”

“Your mother means,” his dad cuts in, “that we should have accepted you. And your boyfriend. And we shouldn’t have driven you away.”

He lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. They’d never called his high school boyfriend anything but _that guy_. But this is a side issue at the moment, even though at one time it was the only issue.

“I didn’t call to talk about this,” Paul snaps, gesturing angrily as if they could see him through the phone.

“Okay,” his mom says evenly. There’s no fight in her voice. It brings him up short. “What _do_ you want to talk about?”

“I called because… I got a job. And I need some information from you. For the job forms. Like, today.”

Her voice becomes soft, warm, joyful. “I’m so glad to hear that. I’m proud of you, Paul. Where are you?”

“Please just help me. I’m not ready to go into details.”

“Okay, okay. What do you need?” It’s strange, his parents giving him space, so little pestering for information, relenting to his requests.

To their credit, his parents buckle down and focus on finding the documents he needs, and for some reason they have them pretty much right there, and scan them and email them to Paul immediately.

“Thank you,” Paul says, checking on Michael’s computer that the email has arrived, with the attached scans of his Social Security card and birth certificate.

But now he doesn’t know how to end the call.

“Paul, can you tell us what city you’re in, at least?” his dad asks. “It’s been a long time since we knew where you were.”

“Right now I’m in Stockton, California.”

“Are you safe? With good people?”

At this, Paul feels his own tears forming. “I’m safe. I’m with the best people I’ve known in a long time.” Tilly and Hugh both lean in against him, that feeling of safety multiplying with them close to him.

“Your sister will be very glad to know you’re okay. Anne’s in Oregon now. Eugene. In college.”

“I want to call her. Can you give me her number?”

His mom counters, “Can we give her yours first?”

“Why?”

His mom sighs. “I think we should talk to her first. Before we let you call her.”

“Why?”

She sighs again. “Anne was very hurt when you left. I don’t think you know how much she missed you.” Paul clenches his fingers around Hugh’s hand. He’d… hoped she would forget about him, more or less. Hugh squeezes back. “If you can call us back in a few days, maybe we can arrange for -”

“Shit.” Paul rubs his eyes with the hand that isn’t currently gripping Hugh’s for dear life. “Fuck.”

“She still loves you very much, Paul, and she’s never stopped praying you were okay.”

“I have to go now,” Paul interjects, feeling his heart begin to race. “I can’t. I can’t.”

“We love you, Paul. Anne will want to talk. It’s just hard. For all of us.”

“I know,” he says. “I’ll call.”

“Bye, Paul.”

When he’s hung up, Tilly and Hugh envelop him in hugs and he stares at his hands and maybe for the first time he really wonders if he did something wrong when he left.

“You had to protect yourself,” Hugh says, as if he can read Paul’s mind. “Sometimes… we hurt people when we have to protect ourselves. She’ll understand. I know she will.”

 _You can’t know shit like that_ , Paul wants to shout. Those are empty, easy words for someone who’s never run away from home.

***

After Hugh takes them out for burritos and beers to celebrate Paul’s new job, Paul and Hugh take blankets up to the furthest corner of the loft. Tilly swaps with Paul for the night and sleeps in the storage room.

Paul wraps himself around Hugh as much as he can, breathing in Hugh’s smell, taking comfort in his warmth.

“I’m sorry for making this whole evening about me,” Paul says into Hugh’s shoulder. “I don’t think I even asked you how you are.”

Hugh pats Paul’s arm over his chest, huffing out a small laugh. “I’m fine. I’m proud of you.” His breath brushes over Paul’s bare arm, tickling the hairs.

“Nothing to be proud of. I just did what I had to.”

“And not everyone would, you know. Especially coming from the life you do.”

Paul snorts. “Whatever.”

Hugh rolls over to face Paul, wrapping his left arm over Paul’s torso. “When I met you, you were unemployed and miserable and hadn’t talked to your family in five years. You just got a job. You just called your parents. That’s huge.”

“If you say so.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing what you do next.”

Paul’s chest constricts with emotions he can’t identify. “You’re amazing. I don’t deserve you,” he replies softly, tightening his arm around Hugh.

Hugh’s eyes are focused somewhere far away now. After several moments, he sighs. “My mom would say I give too much of myself to others. I got myself in a lot of trouble before, when I tried to help someone. You’re different of course.” He sighs again. “He was addicted to meth. I thought I could save him.” Paul’s heart drops. Hugh chuckles drily. “Of course, I couldn’t, but I was young and naive and I wanted to help people and I was in love.”

“Oh.”

“He stole my parents’ savings out of the living room cabinet after dinner one night. We’d all gone out in the yard to play soccer and he went back in. Said he had to use the bathroom. He never came back, actually. Just grabbed the money out of the cabinet and ran.”

“Did you think I was like that guy?” Paul asks hesitantly, a sick feeling lodging in his stomach. “Did you think that I was going to take advantage of you? Do you think that _now_?”

“No, god, no.” Hugh grimaces. “Sorry. But I mean, it’s always in the back of my mind when I get, well, my mom calls it, ‘that helping urge.’ She frowns when she says it. I think it’s important to give what you have for others, right? That’s how we all stay alive. But there’s that one time I got manipulated really badly. And when I met Tilly I just… I was worried I was about to be taken in again.” He smiles. “And you didn’t seem very happy to see me at first.”

Paul remembers. He was shirtless, scruffy, with weeks of sweat and dirt on him, then. It wasn’t that long ago. “I didn’t know we had guests. I don’t usually walk around shirtless.”

“I’ve noticed,” Hugh laughs. “But you got my attention.” He runs a finger down Paul’s jaw line and his eyes crinkle with fondness.

Paul thinks of that first time Hugh touched his cheek, the softness and gentleness of the touch, and now here he is, getting to wrap himself around the same man. “You got my attention too. You were quite a sight that day. Never had someone so hot in my house before.” He grins shyly, unable to hold the eye contact.

Hugh pulls Paul close, lifting his chin slightly to kiss him. Thoughts of the day evaporate as Paul loses himself in the kisses. A feeling of satisfaction replaces the doubts, and Paul seizes it, holds on tight.

***

The act of going to work is about as boring and alienating as Paul expected, but he gets through the day by approaching each element as a problem or puzzle to be solved. How to operate the register in the fewest hand movements, how to alter his mannerisms to fit with the people around him, how to sneak an extra burger for his free lunch, how to get on the good side of coworkers who side-eye him.

How to hide the fact that he’s been homeless since always. This is his first real job. It’s not that people here aren’t struggling in their own ways. But he doesn’t want to talk about it. The boots he's wearing have taken him across many states, traveled in many cars, hiked across trainyards and junkyards and backyards and fields of organic vegetables, kept his feet warm on one too many icy cold nights.

These details of his last eight years, a lifetime that seems more foreign by the day, seem to trip him up while he's trying to figure out how to act normal. 

***

"Paul!" Tilly shouts as she comes into the Discovery the next afternoon. Paul leans over the edge of the loft. "I got a call from Edward.”

He doesn't like what he sees on her face. “And?”

“They tore down the house.”

He blinks at her.

“What?”

“Edward doesn’t know what happened. He’d talked to Richmond, and I guess there was a possibility that the house was falling down too much to sell, or something like that. But there was supposed to be an update. Instead they just tore down three houses at once.”

“You’re kidding me,” Paul says, knowing that she’s not. “Why would he just tear down the house without at least telling Edward that was his plan? It doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

“I don’t know.” Tilly’s lower lip quivers. “Is Michael around?”

He shakes his head. “I think she went to her martial arts class.”

“Fuck, Paul,” she says, her voice breaking.

“Hey, come up here.” He motions her up.

She clomps up the stairs of the ladder in her workboots, and flopping down next to Paul at the top of the ladder. “I really believed we could do it,” she says in a small voice.

Paul’s still in a state of shock, but he can detect the edges of a sinking feeling creeping into his brain. “I know. Me too.” He has a sudden thought. “Is Edward going to call us back?”

“Yeah, I think so. He seemed pretty depressed himself, but he promised to find out what happened.”

“Well. Shit.” Paul stares into space in front of him. “What did I get a job for, again?”

Tilly laughs through her tears. “I don’t fucking know anymore.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes, Tilly leaning up against Paul’s shoulder now as she dries her eyes and sniffles.

“Did you ever ask Michael… how long we can stay?” Paul finally asks. He’s afraid of the answer.

“She said as long as we need, Paul,” Tilly mumbles, surprised. “Why would you think she would kick us out?”

“You know I have trust issues,” Paul says sardonically. “”How many nice people have fucked us over?”

“Michael’s not like that!” Tilly is insulted now. “She’s such a sweetheart, she…”

“Michael asked me if you like her, the other day,” Paul blurts out.

She lets out a noise that’s a cross between a laugh and cough. “What did you tell her?”

“I said she should talk to you about it. She really wanted to know. Seemed disappointed I wouldn’t spill the beans.”

Tilly seems hopeful. And then her mood falls as quickly as it’s lifted. “No, no, no, I can’t go through that again,” she sighs. “I just…”

“I thought you’d want to know,” Paul says, watching Tilly fight with her emotions.

“Yeah, thanks.” She sighs. “It’s more than I can handle right now.”

“I know the feeling.”

***

When Michael comes home a little while later, she finds Paul and Tilly snuggled up under a blanket, listening to the angriest CD Tilly owns, a growly hardcore punk album from old friends of hers back in Minneapolis.

“You two look like shit,” Michael observes with a cautious smile, sitting down across from them. “Or as my kung fu instructor Philippa would say, like your emotions have had a real workout.”

Paul reaches out from under the blanket to turn off the boombox. “The house got torn down,” Tilly mumbles.

Michael’s eyes widen, her smile fading into a sympathetic frown. “Oh no, Tilly, I’m so sorry.” In a flash, she’s moved next to Tilly to give her an awkward hug over the blanket. Tilly’s still facing Paul and gives him a wide-eyed but delighted expression at the hug, before she melts into Michael’s arms.

“Thank you,” she says, leaning her tangled mass of red hair against Michael’s chest.

Paul bites his lip to hide his grin before Michael can see.

“You know you can stay here as long as you need, right?” Michael says. “I will never put anyone out on the street.”

“Paul didn’t believe that you wouldn’t,” Tilly says, and then claps a hand over her mouth, her eyes widening as she looks apologetically at Paul. “Uh. Sorry.”

Michael narrows her eyes at Paul. “You really don’t think that highly of me.”

“No no,” Paul protests, but he can see that he’s a bit too late. “I, uh, I mean, you know how it is. We’ve been burned before.”

Michael flares her nostrils. “Have I given you any reason to distrust me?” It’s not really a question.

Paul wishes he could fall through the floor. “I-”

“You know I’ve been on the street before,” she goes on, genuine hurt creeping into her voice. “How could you possibly think I’d treat you that way?”

“I’m two days into the job that was supposed to help us buy the house that’s just been torn down. Sorry if I’m freaking the fuck out,” he snaps.

Michael glares at him but doesn’t respond, hugging Tilly tighter. Paul gets up and re-establishes himself a few feet away.

Their phone rings, a shrill digital ringing that makes Paul cringe into the big soft blue pillow behind him. Tilly digs the phone out of her pocket and looks at the screen as it rings. “It’s Hugh,” she says, tossing the phone at Paul before settling against Michael again.

“Hey,” Paul answers the phone.

“Paul, I’m…” Hugh seems breathless. No, wait, is he _crying?_ There’s a sniffle.

“What’s wrong?

“My grandpa’s in the hospital and I am losing my shit,” Hugh says.

Paul hangs his head and sighs. This day just won’t stop. “I’m so sorry, Hugh,” he manages.

”He’s back in Puerto Rico and there’s no way I can get back to see him.” Hugh lets out a tiny sob. “I haven’t been very good about calling and he hasn’t been well for a while, but, what if this is the last time I’ll have to see him?”

“Is there a chance he could recover?”

Hugh is silent for an unbearably long time before he replies, “I guess there’s a chance. I don’t know. Like I said, he’s been sick for ages.”

“Do you want to come over?” Paul offers. It would take him too long to get to San Francisco and he has to work tomorrow. Hugh has a car. He could be here in two hours.

“Is that okay?” Hugh asks softly. “I’m not the best company right now.”

“Of course! You’re always welcome here,” Paul protests. “I mean, I’m not the best company either. The house got torn down today.”

“Oh no. Okay. I’m… going to leave right now.”

Michael interjects, “We’re having a show tonight. 9 PM.”

Paul holds back from rolling his eyes as he relays this to Hugh. He’d forgotten and the last thing he wants right now is to have to endure another noisy show.

But Hugh still wants to come over, and at least there’s that.

 


	9. i just wanna be where you want me to be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to @Aphelyon for the encouragement.

Paul moves some cushions downstairs into the storage room to make a bigger sleeping space for Hugh to join him. To make that space, he hauls some of the extra boxes, ladders, and other miscellany into a corner of the warehouse. He also helps Tilly set up the stage and microphones and other equipment.

Finally, he borrows a few dollars from Tilly to go buy taquitos at the corner store.

Hugh walks into the warehouse an hour before the show. His eyes are puffy and a persistent frown creases his normally upbeat features.

“Hey, I thought you might be hungry. I made us some dinner.” Paul gestures to the plate in front of the toaster oven.

Hugh perks up a bit, staring at the plate and then at Paul. “ _Taquitos_? How’d you…? Did I mention taquitos before, or did you just pick something at random?”

“You mentioned liking them once,” Paul explains. “I mean, these probably aren’t as good as the ones from that restaurant you talked about, but it’s what I could do.”

Hugh gazes at Paul with a somehow piercing gentleness. “You’re so thoughtful,” he says, and envelops Paul in a hug. Paul squeezes Hugh as tight as he can. “I tried to call my friend in SF but he didn’t pick up and… I just needed company tonight. I know you have work and everything, and you’re probably really disappointed about your house,” Hugh says apologetically over Paul’s shoulder.

Paul pulls back slightly to give Hugh a perplexed look. “I’ll spend time with you any time,” he says slowly. “Honestly.”

There’s that tiny smile again. “Well, thank you.”

“Taquitos?”

“Taquitos.”

***

Although Hugh seems really glad to be with him, he also seems hesitant, distant. He’s quiet after they finish eating the taquitos, and they just sit together on the floor facing the door, watching Michael and Tilly and Ash make the final preparations.

Hugh reaches over to weave his fingers into Paul’s, squeezing.

Paul smiles, and then the realization kicks in. _Hugh is holding my hand. In public._ Not only that, but he’s moving his thumb gently across the back of Paul’s hand. Paul’s heart starts to race, and a cold sweat breaks out on his hands. It’s not exactly warm in the warehouse, Hugh is bound to think something is weird with him, but he’s sure as hell not letting go.

As small groups of people begin to show up, Hugh even rests his head on Paul’s shoulder.

And when the opening hip hop/Latin fusion band begins, Hugh gets up. “I need to dance,” he announces. Then gives Paul a curious look. “Join me?” He extends his hand.

Paul would cheerfully do almost anything now that would mean he gets to be in close proximity to Hugh, even dancing. But the way the clouds lift a little more from Hugh’s eyes when he says “sure” and lets Hugh help him up - that’s an additional motivator.

Near the back of the crowd of 50 or so people, Hugh starts moving to the music, not exactly dancing with Paul, but next to him. Paul settles awkwardly into moving around near Hugh, always drawn to watching how he moves to the beat, how his sadness continues to melt away bit by bit.

The next song has more Latin flair to it, as much as Paul can tell anything about music that isn’t punk rock. People around them start dancing, more than just moving to the music. Hugh takes his hand and draws Paul closer. “Just follow my lead,” he says right into his ear. Paul nods as if he knows what that really means.

But Hugh seems to pick up on Paul’s lack of skills and simplifies his steps a bit until Paul gets the hang of it.

Dancing eventually becomes comfortable, and then he can really enjoy being so close to the fantastic man in front of him, the way his eyes sparkle, the little thrill every time they step close.

As the song winds down, Hugh beams at him with the full force of his stunning features, and Paul gives in to an unexpected urge to kiss Hugh passionately.

Hugh’s sudden intake of breath is followed by him urgently pulling at Paul’s back, bringing their bodies together as they melt into each other’s mouths. Paul can barely breathe.

They are embarrassingly still in public, though. Paul resists the urge to run his hand up the front of Hugh’s shirt and pulls back from the kiss, grabbing Hugh’s hand off his waist in the process. He raises his eyebrows at Hugh and tilts his head back toward the storage room: _Shall we?_

Hugh’s grin and nod sends a shiver down his spine.

As he leads Hugh off the dance floor, the next song beginning energetically behind him, he catches sight of Tilly and Michael. Michael has her hand on Tilly’s upper arm and they’re laughing at something. As Paul and Hugh pass, Tilly gives him a meaningful look, winking at him. Paul’s cheeks heat up but his heart is racing too much to mind.

***

Paul bolts awake in the early morning with thoughts of their house lost. Hugh softly snoring next to him provides a comforting background to his anxious thoughts, a rhythm by which he can try to establish some order in his brain.

He misses the gentle rustling of the trees outside his window. He misses hearing cars coming from a distance, roaring past the house, fading away again. He misses walks along the fields and the feeling of possibility late at night with the wind stirring a warm breeze into his room, the feeling that maybe, things would be settled again. That _he_ would be settled again.

He’s going to have to call Edward again. He needs a new plan. This is all taking too long.

He turns onto his back, shifting uncomfortably on the many cushions that approximate a bed, trying not to fall between the cushions. He stares at the plywood framed ceiling of the storage room.

_What can I do? The house is gone._

He’s surprised by the depth of emotion this thought wells up within him. The place they’d tried so hard to make a home, ripped away from them again.

 _We could go squat a different house._ But the thought of being evicted again is too much. He couldn’t put Tilly through that. Not now that they both have jobs, and already are settling into that reality.

Paul sighs loudly, and Hugh stirs next to him. Crap, he woke him up.

“What’s wrong?” Hugh mumbles, eyes still closed, reaching out to touch Paul on the shoulder.

“Trying to decide what to do about the house.”

“The house is gone, Paul.” Hugh rubs the sleep out of his eyes and props himself up on his elbow.

“I’m aware of that,” Paul snaps, harsher than he’d intended. “I just… need a new plan. I’m tired of crashing here.”

Hugh rubs his shoulder. “Well, it’s not all your responsibility, you know. Talk to Tilly.”

“I’d like to have some options to give her. Do my research. She has enough on her plate with work. She gets 50 hours a week sometimes. I’m not even working full time.”

“I thought your job _was_ full time.” Hugh squints at him.

“Oh, they like to make you believe that. Managers.” Paul laughs dryly. “I’m only getting 3 days a week for the next 2 weeks. The manager says I might get more hours in the new year. I’m not holding my breath.”

Hugh snorts. “You sound like you’ve been at this job five years already.”

“Between me and my coworkers we have more than enough cynicism to go around. It’s just a job. If I get paid that’s more than anything I got out of what I was doing before.”

Suddenly Hugh leans down to kiss him, and Paul forgets work for a moment, all his attention on Hugh: his lips and tongue, the soft breath from his nose on the top of Paul’s lips, Hugh’s fingers touching his cheek.

Hugh pulls back, dark brown eyes gazing intently into Paul’s. “I -” He blushes and looks up slightly. “I - I was wondering if you’d have time to go away with me for a couple days. It sounds like you might.”

“Go away with you where? Why?”

“On vacation. My roommate’s parents have a cabin up in the Sierra Nevadas, near Mammoth Lakes, and they like to share the place with people. They said I could use it for the weekend right after Christmas, or sometime around then. And… I’d like to take you.” Hugh meets Paul’s eyes again.

“Just me?” Paul’s failing at sounding less stunned than he feels.

Hugh twists his mouth. “Yes. Do you? Want to go with me?”

“I’ve never been on a vacation with… anyone I’ve dated.” Paul raises his eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, of course, I -” Again, Hugh pauses, his cheeks reddening. Hugh’s never been so flustered. It’s perplexing, but then again, Paul would be absolutely lost for words in Hugh’s situation, so, perhaps that’s just how it goes. “I really like spending time with you.”

Warmth floods Paul’s chest. He’s about to reply, repeating Hugh’s words back to him, but something stops him. He closes his mouth.

“You haven’t said whether you want to go,” Hugh sighs.

 _Why is it so hard to say? “_ I do.”

“You don’t look very happy about it.”

Paul groans and covers his face with his hands. “Words are hard.”

“But I don’t read minds, and you look like you’re suffering, and I just want you to tell me what you’re thinking.”

_Well, now that you ask, I’m completely in love with -_

_Oh fuck_.

Paul drags his fingers down his face and opens his eyes. Hugh’s gaze has dropped to somewhere around Paul’s shoulder, a lost expression on his face. “Hugh. I like you. A lot. I want to go wherever - wherever you are.”

_Too much?_

It seems to be enough. Hugh smiles.

“I’m really scared of fucking this up though.”

Now _that’s_ too much. Where did that come from?

Hugh shifts back down to lay his head on the pillow next to Paul’s. “How exactly do you think you might be fucking this up?” Hugh asks gently, wrapping his free arm around Paul’s torso.

 _I love you and -_ Fuck, it’s far too soon for these words.

“Being myself.”

“Paul. I adore you, okay? Please. Do you think I’m capable of not telling you if I was annoyed about something?”

Paul takes a deep breath, trying to absorb the honesty in those eyes. Finally, he shakes his head. _He adores me?_

Hugh’s phone beeps, sending him rolling over to the other side of the bed to grab his phone. Paul spends the tense seconds sending something like prayers into the ether - _please let his grandpa be okay_.

“Oh, thank God,” Hugh whispers, flopping onto his back, clutching his phone to his chest. “He’s stable. He’s getting released today. It’s nothing serious.” He gives Paul a sidelong glance, flashing him a relieved smile. “Thank you for being here with me.”

“No - thank _you_.” Paul curls against Hugh, kisses his shoulder.

***

A few days later, Paul calls Edward. “It’s Paul.”

Edward lets out a sigh so deep Paul can almost feel the air moving over his ear. “Paul. I’m sorry, I ought to have called you earlier.”

“It’s no problem. Did you learn anything?”

“Not good news… Well, maybe this _is_ good news. See what you think. I called the county and found out that those houses had been deemed to be in such a bad state that Richmond was required to either refurbish them or tear them down. You could not have lived there even if he had sold the house to you.”

 _The house was never going to be ours_. “Oh. Wow.”

“Richmond owns other houses on that block. I think I told you that before, I can’t remember. Most of them are abandoned now too. What would you think of me asking about one of those other houses, when I do speak with him? He’s old-fashioned, doesn’t even have an answering machine. So I’ve been calling every day trying to catch him.”

Paul considers this. “There’s no reason not to ask, right?”

“What else do we have to lose?” Edward jokes weakly.

Paul thanks him and gets off the phone. Edward’s right, there is really nothing left for them to lose. This should feel detached and familiar to him, living right on the edge. Instead his heart hurts, as if it wants to leap out of his chest and grab a new home all by itself. Yearning. The word is probably _yearning._

***

“You’re going away with Hugh?” Tilly shrieks, quietly. “Oh, that’s so cute! A vacation!” She nudges his arm with her elbow. “Getting serious, huh?”

Paul blushes. “I… hope so.”

“The way he looks at you, I can’t imagine it’s not serious.”

Before Tilly can weasel some details out of him that he’s not ready to share, Paul pivots. “What about what’s going on with you and Michael?”

Now it’s Tilly’s turn to turn red.

“Speaking of the way someone looks at you,” Paul continues, “The other night she was giving you some very obvious looks.”

“It’s getting a little flirty,” she admits. “I don’t know. I don’t want to rush anything.” She looks at her hands. “And, I’m nowhere in her league. She’s going to college, she’s ridiculously smart, she’s so beautiful…”

“You think I don’t feel the same way about Hugh?” Paul exclaims. “He’s going to be a fucking doctor. I work at a burger joint. I have no idea what he sees in me.”

They look at each other for a moment, and their troubled expressions morph into grins, and then laughter.

“God, I wish my mom didn’t give me such an inferiority complex,” Tilly giggles. “Ugh.”

Paul briefly thinks of Sean, the source of all his own tentativeness about Hugh, grimaces, and shakes his head.

***

Paul comes home from work that night with a bag of burgers to find Hugh and Tilly hanging out in the main area of the warehouse by candlelight. Tilly’s sitting on the floor and Hugh on a loveseat, with unfinished wooden armrests and dingy, stained cushions - but it nonetheless looks quite clean compared to their first couch, the old couch. On a wooden box in front of the couch sits a box of wine.

“Isn’t it great?” Tilly exclaims, patting the loveseat. “Hugh found it on his drive over here and put it in his car. Come sit.” Tilly and Hugh are drinking boxed wine out of jars.

This puts him on the couch next to Hugh and Paul curls up in the opposite corner, legs crossed in front of him, trying not to crowd Hugh. But Hugh scoots over and leans against Paul’s shoulder.

Paul accepts a jar of wine from Tilly and throws the bag of burgers on the table. “Thank you for bringing us things,” he says, giving Hugh a shy smile. “I didn’t even think we were going to see you today.”

Hugh shrugs. “I found this couch near my apartment the other day and I wanted it to be yours. This place needs more furniture. How was work?”

Paul shakes his head. “I’m not very good at the whole job thing.” He rolls his eyes. “I’ve already been written up for talking back to a customer or something.”

“Or something?” Hugh raises an eyebrow at him, with a knowing smile.

“I might have told him that he should chill out and not be so impatient. Apparently that’s unacceptable behavior.” He sighs. “I was really holding back too.”

“A good life skill is knowing when to keep your mouth shut.”

Tilly snorts. “Paul has… let’s say, mixed success with that.” Paul glares, turning red. “Except maybe when I am making fun of him.”

Hugh giggles. “You two!”

“Are you guys hungry? You should eat those burgers. Enrique snuck me a whole bunch of extras and I don’t want them to go to waste,” Paul says, reaching for the bag. “I think there are still four left.”

There’s a lull in the conversation while Hugh and Tilly eat. Paul pulls a library book out of the pocket of his coat and begins to read. It’s a local mycological field guide and it is _fascinating._

Hugh finishes his burger and leans up against Paul again, looking over his shoulder to the book. “A little light reading?”

Paul blushes. “I walked a different way to work today and found a library.”

“If you’re gonna read, maybe I can do some reading for school?”

“Of course.”

Tilly wanders off to tinker with the sticky lock on the main door. Hugh settles in with his anatomy book, kicking off his shoes and resting his feet on Paul’s lap as he leans back against a cushion he’s put over the armrest.

After a few minutes, Paul finishes his wine and sets the jar on the floor. As he leans back, he squeezes Hugh’s leg and looks at him. Hugh smiles at him over his book and reaches out to touch his shoulder.

Again, Paul feels that pull of his heart, just wanting to grab hold of this moment, grab hold of this feeling.


	10. the way the weather can bring two good folks together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's December 27, 2008, and Paul and Hugh arrive at the winter cabin for their vacation. 
> 
> (I had to post this today because it's actually the same date today as the story, and... :D )

Hugh parks the car at the top of the driveway and turns off the engine. As the engine ticks down, Paul admires the view. A small worn wood cabin, painted light blue, is tucked among a stand of tall evergreen trees. Drifts of clean white snow have settled under the eaves of the cabin. The sun is shining and he’s on a vacation. With Hugh.

"Wow," Hugh manages. "This is really beautiful, isn't it."

Paul can feel the cold starting to seep into the car. "I'm sure we can admire the view equally well from inside the house."

Hugh goes to unlock the cabin while Paul opens the trunk and starts to amass an armload of stuff. And he laughs when Paul comes into the cabin, barely able to walk with everything he’s carrying. "We can take more than one trip to the car, you know."

Paul drops blankets, two grocery bags, and finally his backpack onto the floor of the main room. "Just trying to be efficient."

"Dork," Hugh says affectionately, grinning at him. "Hey, so, it might be a while before it gets warm in here. I turned on the propane heat but it could be a bit. Sorry."

Paul shrugs. "Let's go get the rest of the stuff out of the car. We'll warm up."

Hugh looks at the stuff on the floor in front of Paul. "Maybe go put those groceries in the kitchen.” He gestures to Paul’s left, where the small kitchen is located, open to the rest of the main room. “I turned on the refrigerator too."

By the time Hugh returns with two more loads of things from the car, Paul can feel water creeping into his boots. "Shit," he says. "I guess I need new boots. My feet are soaked already."

"Guess I'd better start the fire," Hugh says with an adorable grin.

To be fair, Paul's been thinking for weeks about curling up with Hugh in front of the fireplace here, but he finds himself torn. "Maybe I'll just put them in front of the heater," he says. "And we can make some lunch?" Somehow he wants to wait for the fireplace moment as long as possible. And they’ve been on the road for a few hours.

The little kitchen is just big enough for Paul and Hugh to stand in it and pass each other while making grilled cheese and tomato soup. Or just small enough that they basically have to brush up against each other as they reach for silverware, stir the soup, flip the sandwiches in the pan.  This feels stunningly _normal_ to Paul. Is this what it's like to be truly settled? Well, he hasn't been anywhere with a complete kitchen in... he counts back... 10 months. 10 months since he was in a kitchen like this. Sink, stove, fridge.

"You okay?" Hugh asks.

Paul startles. "Uh, yeah." He smiles sheepishly. "I, uh, I'm not used to cooking like this." He gestures around him. "In a real kitchen. Even at the Discovery there's only the microwave and fridge. And the utility sink. This is so... nice."

Hugh lets out an uneasy chuckle. "I never really thought of that."

"It's fine," Paul says quickly. "I don't really think about it, until something better comes up."

"You're still wearing your boots," Hugh observes. "The heater is in the living room if you want to go take those off."

Paul nods and maneuvers past Hugh to the living room, trailing a hand across Hugh's back as he passes.

The living room is basically just the space next to the kitchen in this open floor plan. A worn brown couch, framed by two standing lamps, faces a large stone fireplace. Paul looks around at the walls until he sees the big heater vent near the back of the room on the left, near the stairs to somewhere, and places his boots and socks directly in front of the vent. It's surprisingly warm. He moves the boots a foot back. No sense in melting them.

"Where do we sleep?" Paul asks as he crosses the room back to Hugh, taking a seat on the stool at the kitchen counter, watching Hugh work.

"Those stairs over there go up to the loft," Hugh says, pouring soup into two white bowls. "It's supposed to be really cozy."

“I guess we’re not going to be able to do much snowshoeing if your boots can’t handle the snow,” Hugh sighs as they sit down for lunch at the kitchen counter.

“I can just put plastic bags over my socks or something.” Paul shrugs. “Not a big deal as long as I have dry socks. I hate having wet feet.”

“Do you have dry socks?”

“As soon as they dry out.”

“You only brought one pair of socks. To an outdoor weekend?” Hugh gives him a disbelieving look.

“The other pair is more hole than sock. So yeah, I only brought one pair of socks.” He glares at Hugh until understanding, then embarrassment crosses his face.

“Oh,” Hugh mumbles. “You can borrow some of mine. Uh. Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m getting paid again next week. I’ll go to the dollar store then.”

Hugh busies himself putting pepper in his soup.

The hot soup and sandwich takes a little bit of chill out of their bones, as does the slowly increasing heat from the unfortunately underpowered propane heater. Hugh makes them hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps to take with them out in the snow, setting two silver insulated mugs on the counter.

He digs a dry pair of socks out of his bag for Paul, and then an extra set of thermal layers. “You’re going to need this extra layer out there,” he advises. “Feel free to borrow these all weekend.”

Before long they’re tromping around outside, strapped into the cabin’s loaner snoeshoes.

Paul tries to remember his snowshoeing skills from many winters ago in the wilds of Minnesota, hiking around forests with his parents. At least one time with Anne. Lift your feet clear of the snow, don’t drag your feet. The snowshoes are a bit large for him, it seems, so he can’t quite walk as naturally as he’d like, but there it is.

Hugh seems a natural at snowshoeing though, eagerly charging up the trail behind the cabin, practically leaving Paul behind before stopping around the first bend to let Paul catch up. “Sorry,” he says with a sheepish grin. “I got excited.”

His smile is so endearing that Paul finds himself leaning in for a kiss whose passion surprises even him. Hugh’s lips are warm and taste of chocolate and peppermint, his mouth is warmer and sweeter. As they kiss, Hugh twists for a moment and then his hands are free, drawing Paul in to intesnify the kiss. He must have put his mug in his backpack pocket, Paul vaguely discerns as he wraps his own arms around Hugh, one hand still holding his mug.

Some seconds or minutes later, Hugh pulls back, his eyes sparkling, his cheeks pink from the cold, and rubs the back of his gloved fingers down Paul’s cheek. “I’m so glad you’re here with me,” he says fondly, and Paul becomes aware that he’s grinning like a fool.

“The feeling is mutual.”

Hugh’s smile widens, and he takes Paul’s hand that is unencumbered by hot chocolate. “I hear the view is really excellent from the top.” He squeezes Paul’s hand. “Let’s go.”

***

An hour’s hike brings them to the top of a ridge, with a view spanning to the next ridge over. A stunningly bright view, sunlight dancing off the sun-capped trees. The freshness of the air is a balm on Paul’s lungs after months of hot summer air and city pollution, the coldness an irritant, but one he can put aside for now.

“I want to sit down for a minute,” Hugh says, clomping over to a fallen log facing the view, seemingly placed here for the very purpose. Hugh brushes several inches of snow off of the log and sits down with a sigh. “Snowshoeing uses a lot of different muscles than weightlifting and cardio,” he says with a grimace. “I think I’m going to be glad to be back at the cabin.”

Paul nods. The cold air is starting to hurt the inside of his ears. The scenery (and the company) is beautiful but he’s ready to feel warm again. Even with Hugh’s thermal layer under his regular clothes he’s still freezing. He lost all his Minnesota conditioning over the course of just one summer, it seems.

Hugh slides off his backpack and rummages around for a moment, producing an unfamiliar insulated container. “I brought extra cocoa,” he says. “Extra schnapps too.” And Paul could hug him.

They are exhausted and slightly tipsy when they return to the cabin in the later afternoon, as the sun is setting.

Kicking off his boots, Hugh makes a beeline for the fireplace. Paul bites his tongue, watching him clumsily pile kindling under a mass of wood. The fire gets going all right, but Paul can see a lesson in their future…

Hugh pulls a thick blanket off the back of the couch and gestures Paul to come over. He needs no more encouragement.

Safely under the blanket, his right arm wrapped around Hugh’s torso and his head resting on Hugh’s shoulder, Paul sighs contentedly.

“A few weeks ago, I would have never guessed you for a cuddler,” Hugh says into Paul’s hair. He slips his arm around Paul’s shoulders and squeezes.

They’re silent for many minutes, the crackles and pops of the fire the only sounds as the room begins to grow dim.

Again, Paul realizes how much he can relax when he’s with Hugh. How much his presence just makes so many of his daily concerns melt away. It certainly helps that they’re in a remote cabin with no one around. But at the heart of his contentment is Hugh.

Hugh kisses his hair. “This is perfect. I’m so glad you came with me.”

“It’s a lot nicer than a warehouse. Or an abandoned house.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I like being with you no matter where we are.”

Paul leans back to look into Hugh’s eyes, the flickering of the fire reflected on his dark irises. “You sure?”

Hugh’s warm chuckle fills Paul’s stomach with butterflies. “Absolutely.” He leans in to capture Paul’s lips under his, and Paul tightens his grip around Hugh, letting the moment carry them away.

***

It’s late when they finally break themselves away from each other to have dinner. Hugh makes spaghetti and meatballs and Paul makes salad. He’s so hungry it feels like his stomach is about to start consuming itself - he keeps eating the croutons and the chunks of veggies as he works.

“Aren’t you cold?” Paul asks, watching Hugh stand over the stove, wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Paul is wearing his hoodie and his worn-out patched jeans that are mostly just patch now.

“No?” Hugh replies. “You warmed me up pretty well,” he adds, winking at Paul. “But I can feel how sore I’m going to be in the morning.”

“I guess tomorrow could be an indoor day.”

Hugh’s knowing laugh makes Paul shiver with something other than a chill. “Sore or not, I’d love nothing better than to spend all day in bed with you tomorrow.”

“We are gonna have to eat,” Paul warns. “Or at least I am. I feel like I’m about to pass out.”

“Sit,” Hugh orders him, gesturing at the counter. “Food’s almost ready. I’ll finish the salad. No passing out.”

As Paul rounds the counter and perches on one of the stools, Hugh slides him a glass of water. “Drink that. You’re probably dehydrated too.”

“Yes, dear doctor.”

***

They don’t spend all the next day indoors, because Paul breaks out his field guide and wants to go identify trees and plants, and Hugh thinks maybe a bit of a walk will ease their sore muscles. After a relaxed breakfast of cereal and coffee, they get all their layers on and head outside.

They get about fifty feet from the cabin door before Paul plops down in the snow to examine a fallen cluster of evergreen needles.

“Some sort of pine,” he mumbles to himself, paging through the book.

“You’re seriously going to sit in the snow?” Hugh says from above him.

“I want to look at this up close and compare it to the book. I don’t have three hands,” Paul says irritably, focused on his reading.

Hugh laughs. “You’re amazing, Paul.” He crouches down in front of Paul, leans over, and kisses him on the cheek, then looking over Paul’s shoulder as he investigates.

“Lodgepole pine,” Paul announces after a couple minutes. “Short needles, in groups of two.” He points to the photo.

“Yeah, looks like it.” Hugh stands up again. “Can we keep walking?”

“I guess,” Paul sighs goodnaturedly, while pocketing a sample of the lodgepole pine needles for later.

***

When they come back from their walk, Paul spills plant samples out of his hoodie pockets and arranges them on the counter, writing in his notebook and sketching them.

Paul looks up from his plant study and admires Hugh’s relaxed expression as he reads a novel on the couch, curled up under a blanket. He’s the picture of relaxation and it makes Paul so happy to see Hugh like this, unworried and unharried by his commitments. This admiration fills him up to the brim, and he realizes he’s grinning like an idiot at Hugh.

He’s obviously done with plants for now, so he closes his notebook and crosses the room to sit down next to Hugh on the couch.

“Learn anything new?” Hugh asks, peering over his novel.

“I know the difference between a Jeffrey pine and a lodgepole pine now. I’ve seen a few other pines other places. At least I might be good at pine trees now.”

Hugh grins. “Paul Stamets: good at pine trees.” He stretches his legs out and rests his feet on Paul’s leg. “This is so good. I could stay up here for a week.”

“Yeah, I wish,” Paul says, knowing they have to go home tomorrow - he has work, Hugh has school. A younger more impulsive version of himself would have just tried to talk Hugh into blowing off school, would have just not showed up to work, would have just not cared, would have just let his future self sort it out.

He sighs. Now he’s Responsible Paul. Hoping to buy a house, somehow? His life has completely shifted in the past four months.

But when he looks at Hugh, the change doesn’t feel quite so unnerving.

“What are you thinking about?” Hugh asks, sitting up, crossing his legs, and taking Paul’s hand.

_I love you._

_“_ Just wishing we could stay here,” he says instead.

“I don’t want to think about that anymore,” Hugh declares. “We’re here now. I want to enjoy every second we have.”

Paul nods. “So, what do you want to think about?”

“How good your lips taste.” Hugh smiles at him and Paul’s stomach flips. “Come here.”

***

Paul’s heart is heavy the next morning when they’re packing up, cleaning the cabin, getting ready to leave.

This was the kind of break from real life he’s been craving for months, and now it’s almost over.

Hugh seems to pick up on his sadness and is extra gentle with him, soft touches on the back, making another pot of coffee for the road, a few extra kisses when they pass each other walking back and forth.

“I don’t want to have to deal with other people anymore,” Paul complains as he sweeps the kitchen. “I’m done with people.”

Hugh’s checking under the couch. “Should I just leave you here?”

“No, I mean, other than you. And Tilly. And Michael.” He scoops the dirt into the trash can and puts the broom and dustpan back next to the fridge.

“I’m honored.”

“Being with you isn’t work,” Paul says, only just understanding the words as he says them. “It’s really nice.”

“Well, I love you too,” Hugh jokes, getting up and dusting off his hands.

Paul freezes.

Hugh’s face goes slack, eyes widening in panic. “Oh. Um. I -”

His mouth closes, opens again, closes.

Paul spirals. _He didn’t mean it, it’s an expression, it’s ruined now, he’s going to dump me because he’s too embarrassed and this is going to be the longest drive ever and we’ll never speak again._ He heads for the door, just needing to be alone if he's going to face the next few hours like this.

“Wait. Don’t - just wait,” Hugh pleads, getting some of his words back.

The urgency in Hugh’s voice pulls Paul back. He sighs and turns around to face Hugh again, who’s almost running across the room.

“I didn’t mean to say that right then. I like you so much, and please don’t… please don’t freak out on me.” Hugh takes Paul’s right hand in both of his hands. “It just slipped out, and it doesn’t have to mean -”

“ _Did_ you mean it though?” Paul asks, his throat tight, wanting to know, not wanting to know.

Hugh bites his lip, squeezing his eyes shut. He takes a deep breath. “Yes. I meant it,” he says hesitantly. “But I don’t want to pressure you. It’s no big deal, I -”

Paul's throat is for some reason even tighter now, but he manages to say, “I love you” in a voice so small he’s not sure Hugh could hear him.

Hugh’s eyes snap open as a broad smile lights up his face. “You do?” His voice is soft as well. There’s so much hope in it.

“You’re the best person I’ve ever met. Yes. I do.”

Hugh closes the remaining distance between them, taking Paul’s face between his hands and bringing them together for the best kiss of Paul’s life.


	11. we sound so sweet when we sing along

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait. A lot of life has been happening lately. But here we are, on the final chapter!  
> An epilogue will follow in a few days (it's already written).

They’re riding high on this mutual admission all the way back to Stockton. Hugh talks excitedly about his new round of classes, which aren't starting for a while yet, but he has a lot of study goals to be ready for the next term. Hugh’s enthusiasm for school is infectious; before long, Paul - high school dropout Paul, who never gave a shit about grades - is wondering if he can get his GED, go to community college, study botany. Or art. Or both.

When Hugh parks in front of Discovery, and it’s time for them to part, Paul lingers, holding Hugh’s hand. “I don’t want to go,” he admits.

“I don’t really want you to go either.”

Paul contemplates making out in the car, but the idea of Tilly walking out and seeing them dissuades him. He sighs. “So come inside for a while,” he suggests. His cheeks are tired from smiling, but he can’t stop. “If there’s no rush.”

Hugh’s grin could light up a whole room. “If I go in, I’ll never leave, and I’ll waste my whole break with you.”

“Is that so bad?”

Hugh shakes his head. “I can’t. But. Maybe if I study a whole lot the next few days I can drive out to visit. Or… you could come visit me in San Francisco? We could do touristy things.”

“I heard about a really amazing squat there,” Paul muses.

“Paul, that’s not touristy. I was thinking, like, Fisherman’s Wharf. Ride the cable car. Go to the Castro. I haven’t really done any of those things myself. I’d like to do them with you.”

He’s about to protest that he can't afford that, but realizes that he _can_ , as soon as he gets paid _._ And more amazingly, even though being a tourist is unbearably bougie, he _wants to_. What is _that_ about?

“Okay. Call me when you want to make plans,” Paul relents, squeezing Hugh’s hand.

Hugh’s other hand finds the back of his head, scratching delightfully on his scalp, as he leans in for a soft, long kiss.

When Hugh finally ends the kiss, Paul’s heart just wants to float out of his chest.

“I should go,” Hugh says, entirely unconvincingly.

“Yeah.” Paul tugs Hugh’s arm toward his waist, drawing Hugh back in. Hugh’s lips are so delicious, the sun is shining, Paul’s warm and well fed and in love. He could live inside this moment for eternity.

“Paul,” Hugh murmurs, smiling against his lips. “Babe. I really do have to go. I’ve got things to do.”

“You’ve got something to do right here.”

Hugh laughs, tracing Paul’s jawbone with his free fingers. “Seriously, though. We’ll see each other again soon.”

“Okay.” It’s a monumental effort for Paul to extract himself from Hugh, get out of the car, pull his backpack from the back seat. Hugh waves as he starts up the car.

Paul watches him drive off, standing on the curb, feeling suddenly bereft. After a few moments staring wistfully at the spot where Hugh was parked, he heads into Discovery.

The warehouse is empty, only making him feel a bit lonelier. Tilly’s probably at work. Michael might be working too - she got some sort of seasonal retail job.

He breathes in the cool air, which smells slightly of concrete and paint. It’s home, for now.

There’s a note on the storage room door from Tilly. 

> _Your sis left a message yesterday - Phone on Michael’s desk if you want to use it_
> 
> _Also, Edward says we need to raise some money - I’ll tell you later, or call him_

His stomach seizes up; his heart pounds thunderously in his ears. Anne! The blonde-haired little kid she was when he left home, now in college. The only member of the family who wasn’t on his case all the time. He should have been better to her. _She called while I was with Hugh - I should have been home - I should have never -_

“Argh,” he says, immediately feeling foolish talking to no one.

He rips the note off the door and goes into Michael’s room. Picking up the phone, he’s getting deja vu, all the ways this obnoxious device has been helping him lately - calling his parents, getting a job, staying in touch with Hugh…

He listens to Anne’s voicemail. Her voice is steady, adult, dry, distant. “ _Paul, it’s Anne. Mom and Dad gave me your number. They said you wanted to talk. Well, here’s my number.”_ He grabs a pad of sticky notes and a pen from Michael’s desk and writes down the number as she repeats it. “ _Call me. Bye._ ”

The detachment in Anne's voice is profoundly unsettling.

She is probably so disappointed in him now.

He takes the phone and paces around the warehouse. She’ll never actually pick up the phone. She’ll be angry and she’ll hang up on him. She’ll chew him out for being gone all this time. And he deserves all of it.

He has the strongest urge to just throw the phone on the ground, shatter it into pieces, never call, disappear again. Disappear.

He runs his hand through his hair, surprised anew at its shortness, cleanness, differentness.

He’s a new person now. Or at least, a different person.

Hugh sat with him through his first talk with his parents. If he were here right now… _You can do this. Family is important. Your sister loves you. You don’t have any more to lose by trying._

Just the memory of Hugh's warm smile lifts his spirits a bit. He dials.

_Ring._

_Ring._

_Ring._

His heart drops -

“Hello?” comes a perkier version of the voice from the voicemail.

“It’s Paul.”

“Oh, hi. Hold on.” There’s a rustling for a few moments, the sound of a door closing. “Okay, I just had to go into my friend’s bedroom, I’m staying with her over winter break.”

Silence works its way under Paul’s skin, and he begins to pace again.

“I, uh… don’t really know where to start,” he admits finally.

“You could apologize,” she snaps. “Five fucking years we didn’t know where you were. We couldn’t be sure you weren’t _dead_.”

He opens his mouth. Sighs. What can he say, really? Would an apology even help?

Anne seems willing to fill his silence, continuing in a voice dripping with anger, “I spent a lot of time blaming _myself_ for you leaving. I _idolized_ you. I wanted to be just like you. I envied how you didn’t care what Mom and Dad thought of you. What I didn’t realize is that you didn’t care about what I thought of you either.”

That’s the stab in the chest he’s been waiting for.

“I did care,” he says.

Anne sighs. “You did a terrible job of showing it.”

“But I couldn’t take any more of Mom and Dad. You had to have noticed how bad things were!”

“So you couldn’t think of any other plan than to completely fucking disappear?”

“No, I couldn’t!” he exclaims. “I had to get out. I was never - you were going to learn the truth about me sooner or later.”

“What truth is that?” she replies immediately, voice a touch softer.

He pinches the bridge of his nose, rubs the corners of his eyes. “I hated that Mom and Dad disapproved of my life. I cared what people thought a lot. I wanted to belong and I never could. That’s why it was so fucking hard. You know how they were just about me dating boys, never mind my friends or how I spent my time. And I didn’t think I should have to live with their shit.”

Anne laughs bitterly. “Yeah, I remember some of that. Let’s just say the conversation went a bit differently for me a few years later.”

 _The conversation… went… differently… later?_ “Are you _queer_?” he blurts out.

“Co-chair of the campus lesbian club.”

“When did you-?”

“Last year.” The scowls, the shouting, he can almost hear and see it all again. “There were tears,” she says off-handedly. “But they said - they had wondered. It wasn’t a surprise.”

Tears threaten at the corners of Paul’s eyes. “My gay baby sister,” he murmurs. He’s grateful nobody's around, because the tears started falling as soon as he spoke.

“I wasn’t a baby when you left, and I’m not a baby now.”

He sniffles and wipes the back of his hand across his nose. He takes a deep breath. “I know. And after all that, I… still don’t know where to start,” he ends with a helpless laugh.

“I’ve got some time,” she says, a little bit of openness on the edge of her still flat tone.

Anne tells him about her library job, and her new girlfriend, and her plans to get a psychology degree. Paul tells her about traveling, and meeting Tilly and Hugh, and even a bit about the house. It's not so much a conversation, but a catching up on each other's lives. It's a start.

Eventually Anne has to go to work. They say tentative goodbyes, with plans to talk again in a few weeks.

His chest is tight when he hits the button to hang up. His head is throbbing, and his eyes drift shut of their own accord.

He’s still supposed to call Edward, but he just can’t muster the energy.

Yesterday he was a guy with a new boyfriend and a new job and a fragile relationship with his parents and today he and Hugh are in love and he might be able to buy a house and he’s just talked to his sister, who's a lesbian, for the first time in five years.

He manages to climb up into the loft and under a blanket before his exhaustion overtakes his anxiety.

***

“Wake up, sleepy.” Tilly’s voice is coming from somewhere near him. He makes a very disgruntled noise. “It’s 6 o’clock at night, Paul, why are you sleeping?”

“Too much hot sex,” he grumbles as if it were a joke. It’s not really a joke, that’s definitely part of the reason he’s tired. But Tilly doesn’t need to know that.

“Gross,” she says, giggling. Paul rubs his eyes and sits up, blinking at her sleepily. She’s still in her work clothes, covered in sawdust. “Edward called again while you were sleeping and I talked to him for a while. He says Richmond will sell us a different house, a couple lots down. But we need five thousand dollars.”

Paul scowls. “Where does this asshole think we have that kind of money lying around?”

“He _knows_ we don’t have it. He’s just throwing his weight around, Edward says. Actually, he wants even more for the house, but Edward says he’s going to help us.”

“Help us how?”

“If we can come up with the down payment, Edward will buy the house. Then we pay him rent until the house is paid off. It’s going to cost thirty thousand altogether.”

Paul rubs his thumbs against his palms. “I have no fucking clue how we’re going to get five thousand dollars.”

“I have over a thousand already.”

“How?”

“It’s called saving, Paul, you might have heard of it?”

Paul scowls at her again. “Look, I just got a job a few weeks ago. I’ve got basically nothing once I pay Hugh back for the phone and clothes and some food.”

“But you’ll make more money.”

“When do we need the money by?” Paul continues, trying to set aside his concern that he won’t really make more money, not enough for that, and Tilly’s just going to have to carry them both…

Tilly sighs, brushing curls back from her face with grimy hands. “Next week.”

“ _Fuuuuuuuuck_ ,” Paul groans, falling back onto the pillows. “Fuck.”

“We’re so close! Maybe Ash and Michael can help us raise money through performances, or something?”

“They need to make money to hold on to this space, they’re not going to want to help us.”

She groans in total exasperation. “Paul! Listen to me. _People want to help us_. Edward does, Michael does, Hugh does, and I bet Ash does too. Stop being such a whiner and trust me. Trust them.” She thrusts the phone at him. “Edward wants to talk to you anyway; call him.”

Reluctantly, Paul takes the phone and calls. Edward says the same as what Tilly told him. They need $5,000 for a down payment. Edward will use his credit to buy the house and rent it to them until they’ve paid the whole amount of the loan plus interest. But Richmond is an impatient man; time is limited.

“I’m sorry I don’t have better news,” Edward said. “If it wasn’t for all the medical bills I have for my wife, I’d help more.”

 _He has a_ wife _?_ “You never mentioned your wife before.”

“She’s in a nursing home in Stockton and I can’t get out to see her very often,” Edward says wearily. “I only drive during the day. And when my hip isn’t flaring up.”

Paul rolls his eyes to himself. If all of this was only riding on him he might be inclined to give up, not fight this battle. Just focus on not getting fired for now. But Tilly’s with him, of course. Edward is fighting for them when he has more than enough on his mind. Hugh wants them to succeed. He wants _Paul_ to succeed.

“I’ll see what I can figure out over here,” he says finally. “I’ll call you in a few days. You don’t have to... rescue us like this.”

Edward chuckles. “I don’t have to. But I want to. You kids bring a little excitement to my life.”

***

In the morning, he calls Hugh: of course he agrees Paul can pay him back in the next few months, because Hugh is amazing.

Then he calls work before his shift even starts: can he pick up any more shifts this week? No such luck. But he still gets paid tomorrow, and that’s $300 he can put toward their total.

Tilly has talked to Michael, who talked to Ash, and they hatched a plan: a big art and music night, five days from now. They’ll put the event details up on Facebook (whatever that is), make flyers, and tell all their friends. Ash will even donate the money from tomorrow night’s show up front too.

“So… that puts us at $2,500 if we’re lucky,” Paul grumbles. “We have to make $2,500 off one show?”

“Ash knows some people with money. We just have to make some stuff that’s worth their while.” She nudges him. “What about you doing some drawings?”

He’s about to argue with her, tell her it’s no use.

But he’s already done so many things he thought were impossible. Sell his art at a show, as something other than a curiosity for a dollar on the street?

After work, Paul takes some of the nicer paper out of the communal art supplies. _It’s worth a try_.

***

Paul wakes up the next morning feeling oddly energized. Well, he got enough sleep. He still has to go to work today, but it’s early. He has an hour before he has to leave.

He gets dressed, putting on his nicer pair of pants and ugly Stockton Burgers polo shirt, and wanders out to the little kitchen corner.

Michael’s heating water in the microwave, reading a textbook while she waits. Paul opens the cabinet under the microwave, getting out the ingredients for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

“How are you this morning?” she asks brusquely.

“Feeling good, actually,” he says, realizing how rarely that's true. The silence stretches out between them, and he knows he needs to say something. “Hey, uh, I’m sorry about not trusting you. You’ve been nothing but generous to Tilly and me. And I should have known better.”

“Yes, you should have known better,” she says, opening the microwave right before it beeps and pouring the mug of water into her insulated mug. “But apology accepted.” She snaps on the lid, straightens up, and looks at him.

Paul offers an olive branch: “Hopefully we’ll be out of here soon, and you can get back to your normal life.”

“It’s funny,” she remarks, sipping her tea. “I don’t really like normal life. I hate routine. I mean, I need routine but I hate it. Having you and Tilly here has been great.”

“We’re not going far. We both still work here, after all.” He laughs, thinking of Tilly. “And I’m sure Tilly will be here every chance she can.”

“I hope so.” Michael smiles sadly. “But I’m still unsure what’s going on with us.”

“Give her time,” Paul reassures her. “She was really weird with me when we first got to know each other. It probably wasn’t until we went traveling together that she warmed up. I got the feeling she was always waiting for me to abandon her.”

“And then you _did_ abandon her.” Michael might as well have punched him in the windpipe. He freezes, shame washing over him and a lump forming in his throat that he can barely breathe around. “I know you two made up, but you still have some work to do,” Michael continues, picking up her messenger bag and slinging it over her shoulder. “Don’t be a dick.”

“I _know_ ,” he says, more defensively than he would like, but they _just_ resolved one conflict. Why is Michael looking for another? “I won’t.”

“Okay.” She searches his expression for a few moments, and smiles a little. “I’m glad to hear it. See you later.”

Obviously it’s going to take a bit longer to patch things up with Michael.

He puts his sandwich together and turns away from the counter. He can’t face the silent empty warehouse with this racing heartbeat and shame spiral.

Rolling his eyes at himself, he decides to take the long way to work. Maybe he’ll stop by the library on the way.

***

Hugh drives over to spend the next night with Paul. It’s an unusually warm evening for January so they sit outside, making signs for the tables at the big event: “Visions,” “Sounds,” “Drinks,” “Snacks.” The theme for the night is “Space,” for some reason. Michael asked that all the signs be painted black with little white dots for stars. Hugh does the basic lettering and then Paul paints over them, making planets out of every “o” and rocket ships out of each “i.”

As Hugh finishes prepping the “Snacks” sign, he’s humming an unknown tune. Paul is freshly enchanted with all the things his love can do.

Hugh sets the sign above the one that Paul’s working on, “Visions.” “I don’t know how you paint that way,” he says. “It blows my mind every time. Those colors, how you mix them, how everything comes out of the brush. You’re so good at this.”

“I am pretty good at painting, aren’t I,” Paul agrees.

Hugh snorts. “It’s refreshing to hear you be nicer to yourself.”

“I think you’d agree: I’m doing a lot better than I was, in life.”

“You deserve to think better of yourself no matter what you’re doing, Paul. Because you’re capable of anything.”

“Stop sounding so genuine.” The praise makes him profoundly twitchy, even with his present good mood. “But on another subject, do you know how I would get my GED?”

“You want to go back to school?”

“Maybe? I could afford it pretty soon, if we don’t get the house. I noticed how all the job ads want high school graduates. It’s bullshit, I can run a register whether or not I have some piece of paper.”

“It’s so classist,” Hugh agrees. “My abuelo managed a shop for decades and never had a diploma.”

Paul sticks his paintbrush in the water jar and turns to Hugh. “But also I’m thinking, maybe I could go to college. I could learn more about biology that way. I really like the books I’ve been getting from the library. Did you know the Oregon ash tree down the next block, it’s in the _olive_ family?”

“I didn’t,” Hugh says with a laugh.

Paul gestures at the dry grasses shooting up between cracks in the pavement, the scraggly tree poking over the fence from the abandoned warehouse next door. “I want to know what all these things are. And how they grow.”

“I know you can find out.” Hugh scoots closer to Paul and leans up against his shoulder, admiring the sign before them. “I believe in you. Maybe the community college has a GED program? You should look it up.”

***

The party is a massive success so far. Under dim lighting, Paul and Hugh run the art and music tables, selling drawings and paintings and CDs from the evening’s various contributors. Paul has several of his botanical drawings on display, featuring his first forays into colored pencils. He’s not quite proud of them, but Hugh seemed to think they’re pretty good.

Across the room, Tilly, dressed in a shiny blue dress and tall black boots, is serving up a storm at the bar table, mixing Space Oddities (some very strange layered drink of green, blue, and red liqueurs, with a maraschino cherry floating on top).

Michael has just finished thanking the latest round of performers. She’s lit by some expertly aimed red lights, highlighting the shine of her brown leather jacket and her giant gold hoop earrings. “And next we have a special guest, someone who’s also recently become part of the Discovery family, my friend Hugh Culber!”

The audience claps, and Hugh grins at Paul.

Paul frowns. “Are you going to _sing_?” he shouts at Hugh, who’s already on his way up.

Hugh steps onto the little plywood stage, taking the mic from Michael. Hugh looks stunning as always, his skin glowing under the lights, casual but perfectly dressed in a black denim jacket, white t-shirt, and black jeans.

Hugh closes his eyes and says, “This is for Paul.”

Paul’s heard Hugh hum, and that was nice enough, but the most beautiful singing voice Paul has ever heard is filling the room. The lyrics, maybe a folk song, are about a journey that leads the singer to his love. But Paul is transfixed by the clarity and passion of Hugh’s voice and doesn’t follow the words. He doesn’t know if Hugh can see him through the stage lights, but every time Hugh opens his eyes he’s looking in Paul’s direction.

As Hugh hits the crescendo note, several people cheer and clap. And then before Paul knows it, he’s done, the final note fading into riotous applause and cheering.

Michael grins and claps along with everyone as she gets back on stage.

“You never told me you had _pipes_ , Hugh!” she laughs. Hugh squeezes her shoulder, handing the mic back as he gets down to stand beside the stage.

“Over the last few years you’ve helped Ash and then me build up Discovery to be a hub of underground art and music,” she tells the audience. “What not all of you know is that this place has also been a place of refuge - first me, living here after coming off the street, and helping build this place up. Then we had a few other temporary guests, and now my friends Tilly and Paul are here. They came to stay here after an eviction and I’ve grown to love and appreciate them both.” Paul notices she only looks at Tilly when she says this, though. He doesn’t doubt that she means both of them, but she clearly means Tilly a little more. “Help our friends launch their dreams,” Michael continues. “We need to raise twenty-five hundred dollars tonight for them to get their own place. We’ve got artwork and CDs on the tables, Tilly is serving up drinks, and Ash is selling snacks. Let’s help them raise that money. Thank you for helping build this home for our community!”

The thunderous applause hurts Paul’s ears.

Michael glances down at the band members and instruments assembling to the left of the stage. “Okay, we’re going to take a little break while we set up for the next band. Buy something and make a friend and have fun!”

Hugh sits down next to Paul again, looking relieved. “I was so nervous,” he confesses.

“You were - wow,” Paul says, taking Hugh’s face between his hands and kissing him deeply. He pulls back a few inches. “Completely fucking amazing. I love you.”

“Do you have a CD?” asks a passing attendee.

“No, sorry,” Hugh chuckles.

“See?” Paul gestures at the back of the person. “They thought so too.”

“I only really sing in church, and in my car,” Hugh says bashfully. “I don’t usually like an audience.”

“You should sing for me more often.”

“I’m glad you like it.” Hugh glows with satisfaction.

 

The rest of the night passes in a blur for Paul: music, one too many Space Oddities, various strangers with money buying things at the table. All told, he sells six of his drawings.

Michael is bouncing from foot to foot in a profoundly uncharacteristic way when she calls Paul and Tilly up to the stage to announce the total.

“I am thrilled to announce that we raised two thousand-” Paul can barely parse the numbers through his nervousness, but he gets the picture when Tilly shrieks and hugs Michael, when the applause and cheering starts up again.

_The house is ours._

Hugh appears at his side, with a comforting arm wrapping around his shoulders, a kiss on his cheek, and a whispered, “You did it.”

Paul looks him in the eyes. “I wouldn’t have done it without you. You know that, right?”

Hugh frowns. “You might not have done this exact thing, but still-”

“You guys!” Tilly shouts, launching herself at Paul now. He hugs her tightly, still in shock. “We’re going to have a home!”

With Hugh grinning at him over her shoulder, Michael thanking the audience, cheers and clapping ringing in his ears, Paul realizes: _We already have one._

***

It’s a cool night in late February when they move into the house.

Paul’s been flying high for days, making sure Edward can get to all the meetings and things he needs to officially buy the house, getting together with Tilly to sign the rent-to-own agreement, buying armfuls of cleaning supplies and spending three days scrubbing off the filth from years of abandonment and rodent infestation. Today, Hugh joined them to finish the job.

Edward comes over for pizza and boxed wine, but excuses himself soon after, claiming exhaustion. There are hugs all around before he departs. Paul still can’t believe their luck, that they met such a genuine, open person in this closed-off, unimaginative, conservative small town. This town that's going to be their town now.

Tilly, Michael, Hugh, and Paul sit on the front porch with their drinking jars filled high with tart and overly sweet red wine.

Tonight they’ll sleep for the first time in what is legally, for whatever that’s worth, their own home.

Michael’s exhausted from school and one glass of wine puts her to sleep, leaning up against the porch railing, her hair puffing out from her head at an odd angle. Tilly grins delightedly at the sight. After a moment, she shakes Michael awake long enough to walk her upstairs.

After a few minutes, Paul starts to get the impression Tilly isn’t returning tonight. That’s fine.

This leaves Hugh and Paul sitting together on the porch couch, smelling the new days of spring and possibilities on the way.

“I can’t believe we did it, still,” Paul muses, weaving his fingers between Hugh's and squeezing. “And I still say I never would have done this without you. Or Tilly.”

Hugh laughs softly, a sound that rings in Paul’s chest. “I wanted to help, you know. You both showed me a lot of love on some days when I really needed it.” It feels like there’s more to that statement. “Like that day I couldn’t catch a ride. Or every time I felt like I couldn’t handle the pressure to be perfect in medical school. I never feel that around you. You and Tilly have way more hustle than most people, but you still share what you have and you appreciate the imperfect.”

Paul shrugs, ducking his head to hide the hot blush that’s spreading over his cheeks. “I guess.”

“Oh, I almost forgot. Hold on.” Hugh gets up and goes into the house, returning a few seconds later with a small rectangular package wrapped in newspaper. “I got you a little housewarming gift.”

“You didn’t have to do that after spending all day cleaning with us,” Paul protests, as he’s tearing off the paper anyway. It’s been far too long since he got a wrapped present.

It’s a thick guide to mushrooms, hundreds of pages of pictures and descriptions and comparative charts and scientific classifications. Paul flips through the book, seeing species names familiar and unfamiliar, tracing his fingers over the glossy pages, feeling his heart growing warmer and warmer.

“Hugh, I don’t know what to say. This is beautiful. I wish it wasn’t so dry around here; I’d have more chances to use it.”

“We’ll have to go back to the cabin in mushroom season too, then.” Hugh laughs.

Paul looks at Hugh in profile, as he’s looking out across the little two lane highway, down the street toward Edward’s house. The way his carefully trimmed beard trails down from his short hair, up across his lip, down over that chin… he is breathtaking.

Hugh probably hears Paul’s breath catch, because he looks over, the corners of his eyes crinkling into his glorious smile. He scoots over to take Paul’s face in his hands, tilt his head, and press their lips together.

A cool breeze raises the hair on Paul’s arms as he returns the kiss, reaching for Hugh’s face in turn, touching that jawline, caressing the back of his neck.

“Thank you for making the last six months way more interesting,” Hugh says, pulling back to kiss him on the cheek and then snuggle against his shoulder.

“If nothing else, I always make things interesting,” Paul says dryly. He rests his chin on the top of Hugh's head. "But you've made the last six months amazing. And I can't wait for more."


	12. find everything you need in all of this

**_5 Years Later_ **

Paul coasts up to the house, out of breath from riding as fast as he can. Hopping off his old 10-speed bike, he carries it onto the porch and into the foyer, propping it on its kickstand in front of Tilly’s similarly vintage bicycle, much less frequently used.

He takes a minute to catch his breath there, checking the time on his phone - 5:23. Before Hugh gets home from his 16-hour residency shift at the hospital, Paul should have time to study some more for tomorrow’s biology midterm.

As he starts walking toward his room, Tilly calls out, “How was work today?” from the kitchen to his right. She’s sitting at the little round table eating a peanut butter sandwich. Her work clothes are splattered with paint.  


“Busy,” he says, mind already onto studying for his histology exam. “Prime garden season, of course. Lots of people with questions about flowers today for some reason. Not my strong suit, but it was fine. How was your day?”

“Renovation is a pain in the ass, but we’re onto painting.  _ Finally _ .” She gestures at herself. “I painted the walls more than myself, but you might not know it from looking at me.” She pops the last of the sandwich in her mouth and chews. “Now I’ve got to figure out what’s wrong with the hydroponic system.”

The front door slams open. Joann, Keyla, and Rhys, their long-term houseguests, are here. They're traveler kids from Minneapolis who set out this way several months ago with a referral from May, an old friend of Tilly's, and dreams of staying in one place for a while. Naturally, Paul and Tilly wanted to help, and they had the room.  


Joann shoves Rhys playfully and he stumbles backwards into the kitchen, laughing. “Hey, kids!” Tilly says. “Hope you're not too tired from the garden. I’ve got a project for us.”

Paul says hi and retreats to the room he shares with Hugh. Slipping on his headphones, he turns on some hardcore punk to drown out the chaos in the next room. Now, onto studying mesothelial tissue…

When he’s exhausted the remaining online practice quizzes, he shuts his laptop and flops down on the bed. The house is quiet again, although the voices of the four younger housemates are filtering in, in snippets, from out in the garden. He runs through his flashcards one more time. Flawless. He’s definitely got this.

Now it’s after 7 PM, and he’s got about an hour before Hugh will be home. Paul would love nothing more than to chill out with his music and some drawing for a while, but he's got one more thing to do.  


So he pulls on his boots and makes the short walk down the street in the twilight to Edward's house, letting himself in with his key.

Edward is sleeping in bed in the living room, propped up on a pile of pillows, when Paul peers in on him. So Paul moves on to make sure that the bathroom and kitchen are in order, which includes checking that Edward has enough food that he can easily prepare, as well as enough of his personal care supplies, and that all the appliances and plumbing fixtures are operating properly. An aide comes to help him with certain tasks a few times a week - but Paul and Tilly and their friends are his main support system, along with another friendly family in town.

When Paul finishes his rounds and returns to the living room, Edward's awake. "Hi Paul," he mumbles, sounding bashful. "For a moment I thought you were Edith."

"I'm sorry," Paul says as kindly as he can manage. Edith passed away over a year ago. Paul never knows what to say - although he sees Edward several times a week, he only met Edward’s wife a handful of times.  


“Don’t be,” Edward croaks, clearing his throat. “How’s the house?”

“Oh, I think Tilly’s keeping our new guests busy.”

“Where’s Hugh?”

“He’s not home yet. He’ll be pretty tired by the time he gets home, so I thought I’d check on you now. Can I bring you some food? Or did you eat already?”

Edward braces himself to sit up. Once upright, he carefully swings his legs over the edge of the bed. “I could use a snack. But I probably need to get up and walk around anyway.” Paul hovers as he grabs for his four-footed cane and slowly stands up, groaning as he straightens completely. “That’s better.”

Edward makes his way to the kitchen, trailed watchfully by Paul, and opens the cabinet above the sink. “Ooh, I love these,” he says, pulling down a box of chocolate chip cookies.

“Hugh says you should be eating fruits and vegetables too.”

Edward grimaces. “If Hugh can make fruits and vegetables taste as good as chocolate chip cookies, then we can talk.” He opens a box, places four of the little cookies on a plate, and puts the box away. “You don’t have to hover. I can make it back to bed. You can go home.”

“I’ll feel better once you’ve made it there. Do you have water? Do you want tea?”

“Tea would be nice,” Edward says, turning to the stove.

“I’ll make it and bring it to you,” Paul says, knowing how many times Edward’s left the stove on after tea. They really need to get him an electric kettle.  


After bringing Edward his tea, Paul makes sure he has water, his meds, the phone, the newspaper, and the remote control within reach. “You call us if you need anything. Don't use the stove.”

“All right,” Edward promises. “You take care now.”

Paul can’t help feeling melancholy as he locks the front door and heads back home. Edward’s probably near the end of his life now, and with his own grandparents having passed away over the last several years, it’s just a reminder of the inevitable.

At home, Tilly and their houseguests are eating bowls of stew in the kitchen, uncharacteristically quietly.

“You need some food?” Joann offers. “We were going to ask Hugh but when he came home, he went right to bed.” Her locks cascade down from her head under a gray slouchy knit hat, a recent project of Keyla's.  


“Sure, I'll eat,” Paul says, disappointed to have missed Hugh coming home early, but realizing how hungry he is.

Rhys scoops Paul up a serving. “Fresh harvest from the garden today,” he says proudly. “Carrots, kale, tomatoes, and then some potatoes and onions and seitan.” It smells delicious, no doubt dressed up with all sorts of spices. Rhys is an excellent cook.

“They made a lot of progress today preparing the fall garden too,” Tilly says. “And we did fix the hydroponic system.”

“How’s your house coming along?” Paul asks Joann around a mouthful of potatoes. Of the three of them, Joann is the most interested in the renovations.

“Well, it’s a mess. But I think with Tilly’s help it should be more or less inhabitable in a few months.” She launches into an enthusiastic description of their drywall project as Paul eats. 

Their three guests are rehabbing the house next door, a second house Tilly and Paul were able to buy last year after paying off Edward. The house had been part of several lots Richmond Tharp sold to a developer years back for a project that was never completed. It had been another miracle that they were able to buy it.

In the meantime, Rhys, Keyla, and Joann are sleeping in tents in the yard. They've built a firepit and often hang out there for hours. Paul gets really nostalgic when he watches them hanging out in the yard, young adults ready for anything. He’s also filled with pride at making something beautiful out of not just one, but now two old houses.  


Keyla manages to goad Paul into a debate on the merits of hydroponic versus conventionally grown tomatoes, and he's just about to concede her point when Hugh shouts indistinctly but urgently from the bedroom.

Paul’s up in a flash, pushing back from the table and hurrying into their room.

Hugh’s backpack and shoes are thrown on the floor in the middle of the room, uncharacteristically, and he has to step around them.  


With just the bedside lamp on, Hugh is visible sitting up in the bed, rubbing his eyes, breathing erratically. His white t-shirt is plastered to his chest with sweat.

“Hey. I’m here,” Paul says.

Hugh looks up and grimaces. “The same dream again.”

Paul kicks off his boots and sits down next to Hugh in bed, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and kissing him on the cheek. “You’re okay.”

“She’s not,” he says in defeat. Paul’s heart breaks a little. A few months ago, a patient to whom Hugh had gotten a bit attached died during his shift. It wasn’t his fault, but Hugh felt the loss deeply. And the nightmares wouldn’t go away.

“I know.” He still doesn’t know what to say to make this better.

“I don’t know if I can keep doing this,” Hugh confesses, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, letting it out. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for it. These dreams-”

“This is what you’ve always wanted to do.” They’ve had this conversation several times over the past year or so, as Hugh finished medical school and started his residency in Stockton. “This is hard for you because you care so much. But you’re so happy when you’re able to help someone.”

“But that goes along with this,” Hugh says, his voice breaking a little. “I’m never going to get used to 16-hour shifts, let alone 24-hour shifts next year. Residency is for masochists. What about the people I can’t help and the bureaucracy I can’t crack and -”

“Hey,” Paul says, trying to keep Hugh from spiraling, “You’re exhausted. What’s going to help you wind down? I could bring you some tea? We could watch a movie?”

It’s a few moments before Hugh nods tentatively, still staring at his hands. “Tea. Movie.” Paul shifts position to get up. “But not yet. Stay a few more minutes?”

They both scoot down so they can lie on the bed, Paul wrapping Hugh in his arms and kissing him on the forehead. Paul breathes in the comforting smell of Hugh’s hair and squeezes him tighter. When Hugh’s a bit calmer, Paul returns to the kitchen.

Their guests are saying goodnight to Tilly, who’s washing dishes, and Paul says goodnight as well.

Tilly places the last cup in the dish rack. “Is he okay?”

“As okay as he ever is.” Paul finds the kettle already filled and turns on the electric stove, watching the coils heat.

“I wish I knew a better way to help him,” she sighs, drying her hands. “Don’t people go to, like, counselors for this kind of thing?”

“Yeah.”  _ If he had time. If he had money. If he wanted to really talk about it. _

“I’m going to Michael’s tonight. Do you need me to pick up anything from town after work tomorrow?”

“I think we’re almost out of toilet paper. And I guess we need more chamomile tea.” Tea... tea... why does that sound... "Can you find one of those electric kettles for Edward, too? I don't think he should use the stove anymore. I don't know if we can get him to stop, but, maybe that will help." Tilly nods, grabbing her notebook from her backpack next to the table and writing.  


Paul's about to leave the room again to be with Hugh until the water boils, when he thinks of something else. "Oh, and we need that awful gluten-free bread, since Anne is coming to visit this weekend."

Tilly beams. “That's right! I wish it wasn’t because her and her girlfriend broke up, but anyway, I hope we’ll have a good time.” She hugs Paul sideways as he stares at the stove again. “I’m sorry things are hard.”

“Thanks.”

***

Paul wakes up late the next morning, glad that his midterm isn’t until later in the afternoon and that he doesn’t have to work today either. Hugh is already awake, staring at the ceiling.

“Morning,” Paul says.

“Hi.”

“How’d you sleep?”

“Okay.” Hugh sighs, pulling the covers up to his chin and rolling over to face Paul. “Still exhausted. But less discouraged, I guess. At least I have the next two days off.”

Paul kisses him gently. “Glad to hear it.”

“Why aren’t _you_ at work?”

“No work today. Biology midterm.”

Hugh’s eyes widen. “And you watched two entire movies with me when you could have been studying?”

“I studied before you got home. And I can study before I leave.”

Hugh scoffs, “I will never understand how you can do that. Doesn't that worry you? I would be so anxious.”

“Not all of us are obsessive studiers,” Paul teases. In a more serious tone, he continues, “Besides, I couldn't study while you're feeling like shit. You come first. ”

Hugh smiles slightly. “Thank you.”

Paul grins suddenly and and raises an eyebrow at Hugh. “You could come first right now too, if you’re interested.”

His partner snorts. “You always have the most ridiculous lines.”

“You love me anyway.”

“I do, God help me.” Hugh pokes an arm out of the covers to wrap it around Paul and pull himself closer. “You gonna follow through?”

“I’m a man of my word,” Paul promises.

***

At 2 PM, Paul finishes his final review of his study material and kisses Hugh goodbye. As he carries his bike outside, the early summer sun falls warmly on his neck and shoulders. The feeling is nothing new, but it still makes up breathe deeply and appreciate what's going on around him. 

He’s still worried about Hugh, even though he’s seemingly content to read a novel on the couch all afternoon and drink iced tea. He's going to need something that Paul can't quite give him, if he's going to make it through residency. But they've been through a lot together. Hugh will figure it out and Paul will be beside him every step of the way.  


Pedaling past the house next door, where Joann and Keyla are drinking coffee on the front porch and wave to him as he passes by, he feels the strength of the community he’s managed to build around him. It’s a ragged little group of people who are still coming from very little, coming from the margins. But they're moving toward a better future, rooted in more love than he’d felt in many years. It’s a community, a place, and a  _ home _ .

**Author's Note:**

> Much much love to the readers who've been following from the beginning. It's weird to think this project has been part of my life for over seven months.
> 
> A separate and special shoutout for [@aphelyon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aphelyon/pseuds/Aphelyon) for being such a cheerleader for this AU, so with appreciation, this is for you. 
> 
> Also, thanks to [@niltia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/niltia/pseuds/niltia) for beta-reading Chapter 11 and the epilogue (my first and only beta reader for this work, helping me get over my confidence problems after having left this unfinished for a few months).
> 
> Please go read their excellent Discovery fics.
> 
> Also, this story has a soundtrack! Each chapter's title comes from the song listed below. You can at least listen to all of them somewhere on the internet.
> 
> Chapters  
> 1 and 2 - "Ballad of the Last Six Months of My Life" by Evan Greer (2005)  
> 3 - "ambiguity" by Slow Teeth  
> 4 - “Turn Those Clapping Hands Into Angry Balled Fists” by Against Me! on Americans Abroad (2006)  
> 5 - “Wilderness” by Sleater-Kinney on The Woods (2005)  
> 6 and 10 - “Winter” by Hail Seizures (2009)  
> 7 - “Light a Fire” - Adhamh Roland (2007)  
> 8 - “spring” by SHARKPACT, on Ditches (2011)  
> 9 - “4th of July” by Parasol, on Crush Season (2011)  
> 11 -"Firecracker" by Parasol, on Crush Season (2011)  
> 12 -“Rice and Bread” by Against Me!, on As the Eternal Cowboy (2003)
> 
> Other Inspiring Songs  
> “Song for the Ride” by Hail Seizures, on For the Ruin (2010)  
> "Screwing Yer Courage" by Team Dresch, on Personal Best (1995)


End file.
